Seo help

[lmasontreeservice]

I recently had YP.com build me a website and they are asking around $700 per month for SEO ( said it takes 6 months to even see results) is this what it cost on avg or are they ripping me like they did for the website?

Are there any cheaper SEO service providers out there please give me a contact thank you

 

[blades]

Yp= At&T+ over priced less than adequate. yes there are a lot of options some more a lot less. Be aware that first page listing is pricey, on average most people never make it to the second page of a search. The various search programs with their built in optimizations are making it harder and harder to get relevant results. seems like every one but you know what info you are looking for. There are school kids out there that can do abetter job than a lot of these so called expert web site companies. Oh and I wouldn't use At&T- too many back ground costs that conveniently never get mentioned up front. Find some one local - face to face if possible. SEo is a lot like the mailing services of almost days gone by for every refinement there is an additional charge.

 

[ATH]

1) YP is fighting for their lives to stay relevant. I think that are divested from AT&T.
2) How large of an area do you want to serve. I don't know my New Mexico geography, so I looked up Rio Rancho. Do you get into Albuquerque or is that a "separate" market? If you are serving/marketing to the whole metro area, that is going to be tough to be on the front page...so you may need to pay that much. If you are marketing to a smaller population, $700 is insanely ridiculous for SEO services. One of the things search engines are trying to do is make results more locally relevant...so the bigger your "local" the more companies fighting for that same space.
3) What is your total marketing budget? I wouldn't spend too high a percentage on one thing.
4) (maybe the most important question): Who did your website? A good website is optimized for search engines from the design. There is NO way I'd have YP do my website. I have seen too many crappy ones from them. Find a local designer to do the website for you. DO NOT have your web design tied to hosting or hosting tied to your design. When you hire the design, you want to own it and control it so if something goes south with the contractor you don't want to have to start back a square 1...you should have a functioning site that somebody else can pick right up where it was left off.

 

[lmasontreeservice]

YP has already created my website (lmasontreeservice.com)
I do serve the abq area (20 mile radius from rio rancho)

There charging me $480 per month for website and online listings they say there putting up 50+ profiles across the internet. I'd like to be at $1k per month for online advert and $1500 per month paper (mailers newspaper ext ext)

1) YP is fighting for their lives to stay relevant. I think that are divested from AT&T.
2) How large of an area do you want to serve. I don't know my New Mexico geography, so I looked up Rio Rancho. Do you get into Albuquerque or is that a "separate" market? If you are serving/marketing to the whole metro area, that is going to be tough to be on the front page...so you may need to pay that much. If you are marketing to a smaller population, $700 is insanely ridiculous for SEO services. One of the things search engines are trying to do is make results more locally relevant...so the bigger your "local" the more companies fighting for that same space.
3) What is your total marketing budget? I wouldn't spend too high a percentage on one thing.
4) (maybe the most important question): Who did your website? A good website is optimized for search engines from the design. There is NO way I'd have YP do my website. I have seen too many crappy ones from them. Find a local designer to do the website for you. DO NOT have your web design tied to hosting or hosting tied to your design. When you hire the design, you want to own it and control it so if something goes south with the contractor you don't want to have to start back a square 1...you should have a functioning site that somebody else can pick right up where it was left off.

 

[ATH]

I'd be all over them about charging you to develop a website that is not optimized. If they tell you it is, why do they need another $700??? If it is not, why would double (or make that triple) down on incompetence?

 

[Griff93]

I'd run away from YP. I bet they have you in a contract though don't they? They screwed up my yellow pages ad, never sent me a proof, and basically said 'oh well.' I got ahold of someone higher up and they at least discounted the ad contract for their screwup. They are getting pretty irrelevant as since March I've only gotten two small jobs from my ad. Those jobs didn't even cover 2 months worth of payment. It's been the most money I've ever wasted. You really need to find someone else.

 

[lmasontreeservice]

Yep 12 month contract

I'd run away from YP. I bet they have you in a contract though don't they? They screwed up my yellow pages ad, never sent me a proof, and basically said 'oh well.' I got ahold of someone higher up and they at least discounted the ad contract for their screwup. They are getting pretty irrelevant as since March I've only gotten two small jobs from my ad. Those jobs didn't even cover 2 months worth of payment. It's been the most money I've ever wasted. You really need to find someone else.

 

[ATH]

You might want to pursue other quotes on another website (even if you have to get a new url)...just to see what you are looking at. $500/month should buy you a LOT of web services from a small local design company. The only cost is labor...so think about it: one guy with 15-20 $500 contracts could spend 8-10 hours per month on just your website and be making a good living. There isn't a day per month's worth of work to get a tree care site at the top of every page for a market of 600K people.

Regardless of what you do, make sure you are aware whether YP wants to autorenew the contract. that is what they do. I crossed that provision out (and initialed it....valid contract practice in most states) on my phonebook contract with them. The invoiced me for a higher amount the next year without contacting me first. Said there was nothing the could do about it since it already went to print. I asked them to show me a contract that says I agreed to that...said it is standard part of the contract. I said I do not sign autorenew contracts - if they could show my signature where I did I would pay them. I said without that I would pay the either: what I paid the last year or nothing at all. They accepted what I paid the previous year. If you are OK renewing with them, that is fine...just be in control and know what is coming.

Do you Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat/etc? Social media is honestly probably more effective than SEOing your homepage (not that I have mastered those!!! I update FB a few times a year and have never Twittered). You can hire that out too...or just do that yourself. Regular e-mail updates to existing clients is probably also more effective than good SEO.

 

[gorman]

Adwords from Google is good. They work with your budget and u can **** can them whenever u want.

 

[stltreedr]

I too made a mistake of advertising with YP online. I was getting almost NO traffic to my website from YP.COM... I called them several times to discuss this, and could hardly get a return phone call. I was able to get out of my contract with them due to their lack of performance and customer service. They will offer you the moon and stars when they are selling you an overpriced package...and then deliver nothing..

Spend the same $700 on google adwords and be ready to answer the phone is my suggestion.

 

[Aldegar]

Best seo option for me is upcity, I built my own site and did my own seo and come up on the first page of google.

 

[Erik Hakso]

YP is not the way. Over priced and not necessarily good results. Remember that only 5 businesses can be in the top 5 positions so any SEO that says they guarantee success is full of BS. To be there you have to work harder and spend more than the others. Look for someone with solid success they can point to. Make sure they don't cherry pick but tell you their winners and losers.

Erik,

www.pro-cuttreeservice.com
Pro Cut Tree Service Lynnwood

 

[mckeetree]

Yp= At&T+ over priced less than adequate. yes there are a lot of options some more a lot less. Be aware that first page listing is pricey, on average most people never make it to the second page of a search. The various search programs with their built in optimizations are making it harder and harder to get relevant results. seems like every one but you know what info you are looking for. There are school kids out there that can do abetter job than a lot of these so called expert web site companies. Oh and I wouldn't use At&T- too many back ground costs that conveniently never get mentioned up front. Find some one local - face to face if possible. SEo is a lot like the mailing services of almost days gone by for every refinement there is an additional charge.

Exactly. All these clowns do is overcharge and deliver less than expected results. The employee turnover at these places is mind boggling. Hardly anyone stays there more than two months.

 

[KrisSchmandt]

I'm thrilled to see this feedback coming in. I am an ISA Certified Arborist turned online marketing consultant. I started doing online marketing work for tree companies (since I know the industry) in early 2014. I've been in the web design/tech/marketing industry since the mid 90's. I can't tell you how many customers and potential customers I have talked to who are singing this same tune about YP (and the others like them). If they charged $700per month (or is is $700 on top of the original $480?) and could get results in a competitive large metro area I would say you are getting a steal but the fact is I have yet to see a YP site ranking well in any area with any level of competition.

A lot of the advice so far has been great. You have to find a company that allows you to walk if they don't perform. On top of that you need to be able to keep your website and domain name so that whoever you hire next can pick up where you left off. The next thing is your service area... any real SEO company who can get serious results is going to charge you based on how hard the rankings you want will be to get and hold. While this is not directly tied to your service area, the overall population is usually a really good gauge.

For cities under 50k ppl a good website with some good content and an active social media presence should be all you need to get some decent rankings. Cities in the 50k -150k ppl range will take some moderate work but are usually something a web designer who is moderately familiar with SEO can handle. If your service area is 200k + you should probably consider finding a company who specializes in SEO. Expect to spend some money but also demand results! No one can guarantee results after all only Google has full control over how they rank sites, but an SEO who promises the moon then won't let you walk if they can't deliver is running some kind of scam.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Several people have mentioned both Google places and Adwords. These are both GREAT places to get customers. Google places is similar to standard SEO in that you have to work to be ranked well. Adwords however is simply a matter of paying for clicks and Google offers a very simple interface to set up and manage a campaign. They also have a more advanced interface that will allow you a lot more customization and save you money on clicks in the long run. The latter option takes some learning.

The point of all this is simple, there is a lot of traffic (customers) online. The phone book is mostly a thing of the past. Plan to spend some money to get and keep good rankings in larger areas but expect great results to come from great rankings!

 

[Griff93]

I too made a mistake of advertising with YP online. I was getting almost NO traffic to my website from YP.COM... I called them several times to discuss this, and could hardly get a return phone call. I was able to get out of my contract with them due to their lack of performance and customer service. They will offer you the moon and stars when they are selling you an overpriced package...and then deliver nothing..

Spend the same $700 on google adwords and be ready to answer the phone is my suggestion.

I think the people at YP must sit around thinking up ways to screw their customers. The idiots have put the WRONG phone number on my online ad. How long has it been like that? Possibly months as I don't check it regularly. They probably 'fixed' it when they fixed their screw up of listing me in the wrong geographical area online. I've called and talked to them but they still haven't fixed it weeks later. They have no idea how it happened.

 

[BuckmasterStumpGrinding]

Call the number and see who answers. They may be routing it through a different number so you can see exactly how many calls they are delivering. It may just be wrong. Either way it would be nice to know what is going on. If someone else is getting your calls then you should befriend them and make sure they give out your real number... If the ad even delivers any business.

 

[ATH]

Call the number and see who answers. They may be routing it through a different number so you can see exactly how many calls they are delivering. ....

Yeah they do that. I'd say no way! You don't want mixed messages "which number do I call". Plus if somebody wrote it or put in their phone off of the site, they don't reach you when you drop YP.

 

[AnthonyPrewitt]

I recently had YP.com build me a website and they are asking around $700 per month for SEO ( said it takes 6 months to even see results) is this what it cost on avg or are they ripping me like they did for the website?

Are there any cheaper SEO service providers out there please give me a contact thank you

First of all you should understand that the SEO is not more like conventional. The strategies build to gain rank on search engines need to be very targeted, instead of going to black hat techniques and building lots of links, the link structure should be of high quality with good content. Give more focus on long tail keywords and try to involve in question like query for e.g. how, when, why, where etc......

 

[Kate Galleozzie]

After reviewing all comments, I suggest a professional individual online marketer who take care for your site. We have one marketer and he is charging just $300 for site SEO, articles posting, directories etc... I already forward your details to Him and might he will contact you.

 

[yarightdawg]

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