Thank god for finding a decent SEO company, that’s all I can say. We are currently in the process of optimising our Micar.com website so people can actually find us for a change!! At first I thought I would have a bit of a go myself as all this SEO looks quite easy, but after a few weeks I gave up because it really wasn’t making any sort of difference to be honest.
If you searched on Google for terms that related to our business then you would find all of our known competitors websites but not our own, this was a concern but to be honest its our own fault because we never prioritised the site as a major part of our marketing, this was a big oversight from us.
So we decided to do something about this, as stated above I did try a little myself but soon realised that I wasn’t up to it, so I contacted a few companies and enquired about SEO services, and this is where our troubles started.
We found a company that appeared to have a good track record, they had references and they offered a free trial which all sounded good, so I gave them a crack of the whip. Within 2 weeks we were appearing on the first page of Google for our main term which was “apparel software company”, because this is exactly what we are. It soon became apparent just how important good standing on the internet was, as our enquiries tripled within 10 days, all was sweet in the Micar garden.
After a month we decided to sign up for the service due to the outstanding results that were achieved, and this is where our problems started.
Within 2 weeks of signing up, we stated to disappear from Google, when I called the SEO company I was told that this is commonplace and that a “bounce” is quite common, I was not convinced but I had to take their word for it, I was advised to sit tight and wait for a recovery.
So we sat tight, and tight, and tighter still for over 2 months and nothing was happening. I put my displeasure in writing with the hope that it might trigger a response, but I was wrong, the silence from their end was deafening…..
In the end I managed to break contract (with a struggle) but the experience left me very wary of search engine companies, and to be honest most of them that called were told to P**s off very quickly. But the problems was that we knew we had to do something about our current position on Google as when we were high up the page position, we were getting lots of business. So what was the answer?? The answer was to learn how to do it ourselves properly and that is what we did.
How did we find someone to trust? That was hard, but in the end we did by searching for someone local that could come to our office and show us just how good they were and how they could help us. It has taken us months to learn the art of SEO and I have to say I had no idea as to the amount of work that goes in, it really is crazy but the results make it a worthwhile and rewarding experience. I have to point out that we have been trained to do the work in an “Ethical” way, which avoids rising to the top quickly and but dropping like a stone just weeks later.
So there you have it, from our experience learning SEO was very cost effective, so dont be afraid to do so.
Resources;
SEO Consultant London based company that trained us up. This has saved us thousands and has started to make us money.
Micar Computers's Blog 