FAQ’s
What are ‘Set Up Charges’?
Set up charges are essential to the correct handover of your account to our care. We put a lot of time, effort and care into ensuring that any handover from your existing Agency, SEO provider, website designer or builder and/or hosting partner is done smoothly and professionally. This all takes time and expertise, and generally a considerable outlay on our part to ensure that we know your website inside out. We will need to analyse the code, check and probably change a whole range of on page items and understand fully how your site works and what we will need to change to implement our strategy. All this goes on behind the scenes but typically will take round two full days work before we can begin to implement the strategy you have agreed.
Why do I have to pay in advance each month for SEO?
With SEO charges you are generally paying for two things; time and experience. With the experience comes the expertise needed to know exactly what to do to correctly optimise your website and help it rank higher on the Search Engines, and of course to implement this requires time. SEO companies try to surround their workings with an air of mystery to justify higher charges, but the reality is that most of the time we’re busy working on the code and structure of your site and creating and building the correct links back to your site. And once the work is done the results follow.
So the principle we adopt is that of many service industries which is you pay for the service at the point we start to deliver it, and that is when we commence work. To draw a parallel with another well known process, you never actually see the workings of the internal combustion engine but you know that if you put petrol in the tank your car will go. So with our services, if you pay for SEO you will never see the ‘magic’ going on behind the scenes on your website but you will see it ranking on the Search Engines for the words and phrases that deliver the business you need.
Why do you charge for Monthly Reporting?
Each month we will produce a bespoke report for you which details the progress of your website(s) on the various Search Engines, and identify opportunities for the future. This is a manual and time consuming process but one we generally find very worthwhile. Of course we could automate it like so many other Agencies, but we’ve found that reports produced in this fashion generally end up unread.
The difference between what we do and what other Agencies do is the difference between information and intelligence. And we know which we’d rather have….
In addition, our monthly reports are there to add value to your business. We spend a lot of time working on them and thinking about what the data is telling us. Experience tells us that if we give this away free it becomes valueless. We could of course hide the cost within our other charges, but then that also devalues it as well. Used properly our reports will end up saving you thousands of pounds and earning even more as we identify the best revenue producing areas and go after them to generate additional business for you.
How soon can I expect to see results from my SEO?
This is always a tricky question to answer, as it depends on so many variables such as the size of your website, its age, how often it’s updated etc, and of course we’re always at the mercy of the Search Engines who could change their algorithm without notice. In general though we can usually see measurable results by the end of the third month, as that has given the Search Engines time to identify that your site has changed and incorporate those changes into their results. Of course if we add in a tracked telephony package for you then measurable results can often be quicker as phone calls will start coming in the day after we change your site.
What is the difference between ‘White Hat’ and ‘Black Hat’ SEO and why is this important?
The difference between ‘White Hat’ and ‘Black Hat’ SEO is the difference between good and bad, Black Hat SEO techniques are those designed to deceive the Search Engines into moving your website up their rankings. This might get you some short term gains but eventually you will get found out and your site will be penalised. There are many examples of well known names who have fallen foul of this such as BMW and JC Pennys, where they were badly advised by their Agencies and ultimately got caught and punished. White Hat SEO techniques involve doing things right, ethically and professionally. The results usually aren’’t as quick as Black Hat, but they last a lot longer. And it means you can sleep soundly at night knowing that your business won’t be penalised.
As you might expect, we only use White Hat techniques.
And just so you know, the terms Black and White hat refer to the old Westerns, when the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats……
Why is ‘Link Building budget’ a separate item on my quote?
We always separate Link Building budget out as any money you give us for this is spent entirely on Links for your website. We don’t take a cut of this money nor do we charge a commission on it. Every penny you give us goes towards generating relevant and contextual links for your site; links that you will own. Unlike many other Agencies we don’t plug you into ‘content networks’ nor do we use ‘link farmers’ or people who will rent you links. We believe that the links to your site should be high quality, long term and above all relevant. Building them this way is more time consuming and it does take longer to get higher in the rankings, but eventually it will give you a long term competitive advantage that your rivals cannot match.