Search Engines

Now I will be the first to admit tht as much as I have looked into this whole thing of search engine optimization....In theory I get it.............but the inner workings still baffle me. I know there are alot of sites that would try to get you to buy in on these plans to move you up in the ranks. Well something must be working because I am only on free sites/with free "basic" plans and the calls are coming in. One of the first questions I ask is "How did you hear about us?" The majority response is I just happened to find your site on the web. Folks just doing a random search. So people are finding me...still confusedthough..... lololol because when I try to find me I can't.

I was tossing around upgrading to one of the plans but now i don't know

Go figure??

What has your experience been.....are you going the free route or did you go for the upgrade

Where your website is hosted, do you have access to "log files"? These stats show you what words people used to search for your site in search engines or where people were when they found your link. As a general rule of thumb, the pay a flat rate and have someone rework your site and submit it is not of value (some call them scams), but I've seen good results for paying for specific words on specific engines (if it is a word that is inexpensive that you don't have a good ranking for otherwise). Traffic to your site is one of those places where you know your business best and it is just a matter of you putting in some time to submit to various search engines/sites to increase your visibility.

But see that's my point..... where I was thinking about doing an upgrade to increase visibility and get more calls.........has essentially already been happening. So I guess I was questioning what is the value of paying for the uprgrade when I am already getting the results.

I guess I wanted to find out was those that started out free and were getting responses did you still then choose to upgrade and how much more of an increase in calls did you see, and was it worth the money?

I guess I'm confused about what option you are talking about being free and an upgrade....

I wouldn't pay for SEO... this might help http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_ranking

Basically though, you want as many other good sites as possible linking to your site. You can do this by getting onto free listing sites, by doing link exchanges with other local businesses, etc. Make sure you have a google places page and I've gotten more from pay per click with my google adwords than any other paid advertising. The other thing that article mentions is that your ranking automatically goes up when your site has been around for at least a year... it shows longevity.

NEVER pay for that, ever.

Your website will, over time get picked up more and more. Have links to valid related sites, use meta-tags (although apparently this is now old school!) use every free listing you can, submit your site to the search engines (you can do this for all of them), etc.

Read up on SEO on the net - and don't pay anyone to do it for you. It is a rip-off.

I agree with Shannon. Try to mention your key words in your text and meta tags, submit yourself to everything you can think of... Yelp.com, superpages.com google maps, craigslist, merchantCircle.com, etc. Put your city name and link to your site in your siggy here (look at mine). Make a public company Facebook page and link to your site, anywhere you can put links to your site on the Internet.

OK just to clarify.......... I have done all of the above(Free site listings) already. My question was.....

If there was any added benefit to upgrading to the plans they want you to pay for?? and if anyone who had done this...did they see a measurable increase in inquiries in comparison with the number of inquiries they were receving under the free listings.

But I see now there is no reason to especially if I am already getting results

Thank you for all of your input

I paid for the upgraded listing on MyPartyPlanner and saw no difference at all... the only people who look at sites like that are other people in the business and search engines.... Even if I go to that site now and do the same search, there's still nobody from my area listed in that space and my paid google ad shows up anyway It's ok to pay for advertising, but I don't think it's worth it for a directory... customers don't look there because it is just a list, they can get a list in a regular google search and it will be more thorough a list since it includes things other than just the people who went there and added themselves.

Perryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy (Erinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn) Thank you, you got what I was asking....lolol Thank you for responding. OK I now know it's not really worth it