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Do "Search Engine Optimizers" really work?
Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2003 9:47 am
by Swede78
I'm trying to get my site listed higher on the major search engines. My question is... do these companies that specialize in getting you listed higher, actually work? I've already done things myself, like create the meta tags and keywords. But, they claim to create links to your site, which I can't do.
Some of the optimizer companies I've run across, are
http://www.gettoprankings.com and trafficmagnet.com.
Has anyone tried using such a service. If so, your comments would be appreciated.
Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2003 7:48 pm
by JPlush76
think of it this way...
if they can PROMISE you top 10 results what happens if they have 15 companies that want the same keyword searches as you?
obviously they're bogus, instead look for a reputable company that only claims to increase your position, not make you top 3. Stay away from those
Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2003 8:08 pm
by phice
All I can say that is gaurentee'd to work: Make your site better. Better, better, better.

And get other websites to link you.
Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2003 6:00 pm
by gobo
or do the old self rhetorical link-back tricks

teehee
Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 3:12 pm
by Gen-ik
Most website search engines including Yahoo! and Google
wil eventually find your website. How they rate your website is simply down to the <meta> tags in the <head> of your page... how many links on your website actually work... how many links on your website link to other sites... and how many times your site is visited from the Yahoo!/Google pages.
It's not rocket science, but with the number of sites on the internet getting yours into the top 10 or so will take time... probably a long time.
By the way
never pay anyone to get your website rating higher... they simply rip you off and do stuff which you can easily do yourself (mentioned above).
As an example my own website urbanchaos.net is currently second on Google...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=U ... anchaos%22 ... and Yahoo!
Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 3:29 pm
by microthick
Gen-ik wrote:Most website search engines including Yahoo! and Google
wil eventually find your website. How they rate your website is simply down to the <meta> tags in the <head> of your page... how many links on your website actually work... how many links on your website link to other sites... and how many times your site is visited from the Yahoo!/Google pages.
It's not rocket science, but with the number of sites on the internet getting yours into the top 10 or so will take time... probably a long time.
By the way
never pay anyone to get your website rating higher... they simply rip you off and do stuff which you can easily do yourself (mentioned above).
As an example my own website urbanchaos.net is currently second on Google...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=U ... anchaos%22 ... and Yahoo!
When you search for "Urbanchaos". Besides you, though, who's gonna do that?
Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 3:32 pm
by basdog22
Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 3:58 pm
by Gen-ik
microthick wrote:When you search for "Urbanchaos". Besides you, though, who's gonna do that?
Don't know and don't really care, that wasn't the point I was making. The point I was making is that you can optimise your website for higher search ratings without having to pay money to a company who prey on the stupid and unwebucated.
And you'd be surprised about the amount of people that do actually search for "urbanchaos"... a video game has the same name and loads of people do search for it.
Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 4:07 pm
by microthick
Gen-ik, your argument fails.
You may have very well optimized your site for search engines. I mean, you do have meta tags, and all that.
But if you search for any of those keywords, you won't find your site in the top 1000 on Google.
You do say though that your site urbanchaos is ranked number 2 because of your optimization when you search for "Urbanchaos". But you don't mention the word Urbanchaos in your meta tags anywhere, except once as a keyword on your inner pages.
Your #2 ranking for "Urbanchaos" is solely due to your domain name being urbanchaos.net.
Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 4:17 pm
by microthick
Regarding the original post, I believe that if you can find a company that can prove their skills, they are worth their weight in gold.
Search engine optimization isn't about just having links, and ensuring that they work, and having quality meta tags.
It's about ensuring that all non-spacer images have meaningful descriptions, it's about ensuring that <h3> and <h2> and <h1> tags contain meaningful descriptors, it's about ensuring that you are repeating important words many times throughout your pages, it's about naming your html files appropriately, ... it's about a lot of stuff.
And sure, I could do it all myself, but I don't have the time nor interest to do it myself. So, just as companies hire me to create them web applications because I have experience to do it correctly, if search engine ranking was very important to me, I'd hire someone to do it right as well.
Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 4:23 pm
by Gen-ik
Good points microthick so I won't argue with ya.
Another option is to drop a 'bomb' on Google or Yahoo! and get your site noticed that way.
Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 9:17 am
by Swede78
Interesting how this post got brought back to life. I posted the original back in Aug. We did end up hiring a company to do it for us. EzRankings.com claims to be able to get you in the top-20 positions of google. So far, none of our key words or phrases are there.
They did however, get our most desired term on the 3rd page (#22). It was already on the 8th page, which is very good. They still have a couple months to prove themselves, or they're supposed to refund us for any words that didn't make it.
Overall, I would not recommend doing this. Even if we get all the words in top-20 positions, these people are hardly responsible. I've put a lot of work into it myself, without their help. We decided to give them a try in hopes that the site would be ranked high for the holiday season. We'll see when this is all done, how hard we have to fight for our money back.
Lesson learned. DO NOT use EZ-Rankings!
Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2003 8:26 am
by devork
http://www.google.com/remove.html
there is a file called robot.txt that spiders/crawlers read from your site, does this relates to ranking in google?
Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 11:18 am
by Swede78
The robot.txt file lets you control what directories/files the spiders are allowed access to. If you deny access to everything, then the spiders will not crawl through your site. They only index the pages that they crawl. So, yes it's related in that it can determine whether or not your site is ranked, but not what position it's ranked.
Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2004 3:17 pm
by d3ad1ysp0rk
The robot.txt file is also used if you need an automatic link removal for some reason.