[thelist] client needs search engine help...

[Chris George]

Hi John,

When I create a site for a client I include some details about how I
optimize their pages as best as I can, based upon the content of the time.
I also do a one-time search engine submission with WebPosition Gold.  That's
standard practice for me. No follow-up, no ongoing tweaking. I used to build
that into my quotes in the past, but almost all my clients ended up trying
to cut a deal and those were the first to go. They'd much rather eye candy
than more traffic, apparently.

But in having said that search engine technology is very much a part of my
job, be it at my day job or on the side.  Good search engine rankings have
proven (in my case) to be better than most types of advertising, and
therefore I put a lot of weight on completing or implementing an ongoing
search engine strategy.

Our clients get fax-spam from this company that allegedly does search engine
indexing and part of their fax is a chart based upon one specific keyword
that they don't show up well for.  As it turns out this particular company
was a scam - but it got a few of our clients in a bit of a tizzy over it.
What I recommend is if you could get as much information about what type of
searches this person was doing with what keywords on what search engines,
that would help you see the validity of his visit.  Also going through the
referrer logs to see where people are coming from (i.e. if the person says
'you get no results from Northern Light' depending on your demographic/logs
it may not matter...)

Anyway. I'm sort of rambling here...  Our solution here is if the client's
willing to pay a small monthly fee we can set up monthly tracking reports
through WebPosition which, after submission sees when the engines pick up
the site and tracks the rank.  Very cool.  The tool has paid for itself,
that's for sure.  

HTH a bit (and I don't feel I've completely explained things perfectly here,
so lemme know if I can explain things better).

Chris.

on 6/13/2001 1:38 PM, John Corry at webshot at neoncowboy.com wrote:

> I got this from one of my better clients yesterday...
> 
>> we don't rank/show up on search engines at the moment.
>> Somebody was in
>> and pitched me on creating an entry page for search engines with 'Top dog'
>> software to get us showing up and ranked.  We pay only based on
>> how we place in
>> the search engines.  I am considering going that route to
>> increase hits.... what
>> do you think?
> 
> I can agree that they need help...but I don't really want to help them with
> this...learning the intricacies of search engine placementn and patiently
> tweaking code a little at at time to produce the maximum level of exposure
> is not why I got into this field. I *do* feel obligated to help them with
> this though, and see it as sort of my responsibility since I built and
> maintain their site. All of their pages feature titles, descriptions and
> keywords...so I haven't been totally derelict in duty.
> 
> I need some help.
> 
> Is this 'Top Dog' thing worth its salt? I'm afraid of giving up a little
> control to a 'search engine strategist' or whatever, and losing my nice site
> maintenance contract when they offer to undercut me. Do any of you work with
> people providing these services that you would reccomend?
> 
> thanks,
> John