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inclusiontech
Joined: Mar 16, 2005
# Posts: 2
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Posted: 2005-Mar-16 22:00
Hello Folks -
We have a real estate website that we hired an SEO company to optimize for
us recently. After paying them a couple of thousand dollars down, they came
back a week later and told us they were unable to help us unless we
redeveloped our website in a different technology and had them host it. At first
thought, this sounds suspicious. But here is the whole scoop:
Our website is built in Lotus/Domino which I have heard has issues with Search Engines
but hard to say as I see some websites completely built in Lotus/Domino that are
ranking #2 in Google and Yahoo!.
Our real estate website is so broad that we are not sure how start it. We had been told
you need to focus your topic to one specific part of real estate, like apartments for
example. However, we have real estate, apartments, home repairs, real estate agents,
just about everything. They are telling us we need to have all of these different websites
for each topic yet we have seen some websites that have been successful with one top
domain and a directory page listing. (For example www.mysite.com/apartments.html and
www.mysite.com/realestate.html and www.mysite.com/realestateagents.html)
Before we proceed any further with this company, I was hoping to get some feedback from
others. We aren't sure if we are being misled and are starting with the best format or not. We
would like to avoid as many mistakes as possible for the future.
I guess we can't tell if these people just don't want to take the time to try to figure out our web software and are trying to rake us for more money or not or if they have legitimate concerns.
Thanks in advance for help
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bhartzer
Staff
Joined: Jun 08, 2000
# Posts: 7042
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Posted: 2005-Mar-16 22:43
Welcome to the forums, inclusiontech!
I'm glad to hear that you're questioning what they're saying. Some of what they're saying may be true, but without knowing much more about your particular case (or which site you're talking about) it's tough for me to very specific recommendations.
However, what I can tell you is that SEO is not all about on-page optimization. So, you don't necessarily have to ditch your current site and go with a redeveloped site with new technology (with them hosting it). That sounds more like a sales pitch than anything else. Sure, if you completely redesigned your website and had them host it you'd have to most likely pay them a lot more money.
The most important part of the SEO for you is probably going to be the following:
- Make sure your web pages are search-engine friendly. This means that they can get crawled properly and indexed in the major search engines.
- The navigation of the site is SEO-friendly. This means that the links on the site (from page to page) can be crawled easily and that PageRank can be distributed properly throughout the site.
- The SEO firm embarks on a massive link building campaign for your site. You're in an extremely competitive industry and without thousands of on-topic links you're just not going to rank well in the search engines.
The link building campaign, in my opinion, is probably going to be the most important part of the overall SEO effort. You can probably do just fine with your current site as long as the page can get crawled and indexed (if there's an issue then the URLS can be re-written so that they're indexed properly, that's not a real big issue).
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dcaff03
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 142
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Posted: 2005-Mar-16 23:17
To follow up with what bhartzer is saying:
Go to Google and in the search bar type in the following:
site:www.yourdomainname.com (place your domain name after the www ... formatted like a normal root url string
Then click search...this should bring back all the pages that Google has indexed so far for your entire site (you can also do the same command with Yahoo and MSN ... at least you will know if the search engines are seeing your site and crawling it..
Another approach is to go to Google and type in the search bar "spider simulators" ... in the top five you should see a several sites offering this free service...go to one of them...in their search box type your full domain name (if they already provide the http:// part then just the rest of the normal url www.yourdomainhere.com ...
A "spider simulator" will crawl your site and you will see the results returned in plain text... all the "text" on the page that the spider sees and also all the outbound links from that page to other resources on your site or even resources located off your site...
You should get a pretty good picture regarding how the search spiders are seeing your site then...
Link Building is very critical today...but if it is done too aggressively you could get "penalized" or at least your site will suffer some in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)...so be careful with how aggressively this is done...
At least, you have some ammo to come back at the SEO firm about it's particular claims...
Good luck...
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10438
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Posted: 2005-Mar-18 19:58
Hmm, as soon as I read that you had alread paid them money and now they come back with a whole load of new stuff that they want to do, my brain just screamed "scam".
What was the money you already paid supposed to be paying for? Haven't you already agreed a plan of work with them?
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inclusiontech
Joined: Mar 16, 2005
# Posts: 2
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Posted: 2005-Mar-21 07:17
The money we paid them was supposed to be for the optimization only. Then, they said that the software we have would suddenly not work with SEO and that if they did the SEO we would not get any results. This turned into the conversation of rebuild the website completely and let them host it. It is hard to say what is going on, they have said some things that seem legitimate and some things that haven't made any sense. We are on the fence with them
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St0n3y
Joined: May 01, 2002
# Posts: 1620
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Posted: 2005-Mar-21 18:02
It could be legitimate. They may have simply made the sale before thoroughly researching the site. The bit about having to host your site, though, seems fishy. I would find out if they are willing to return your money since they are unable to optimize your site as promised. If they are willing then they are probably just trying to implement whatever measures will help them be successful. If they balk at giving your money back then you may have a problem on your hands.
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jsrobinson
Joined: Dec 18, 2004
# Posts: 29
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Posted: 2005-Mar-22 00:52
First, let me say that I think it isn't a scam, but the SEO company doesn't have a lot of experience, hence why you are in this position with them. StOn3y's remark about not having done the proper amount of research upfront is right on.
Second, having them host is not fishy, as this is (mostly) a requirement for my customers as well. It gives my company much more control over what can and can't be done with a given client's site.
BUT, this "control" that we gain by hosting the website is marginalized by other factors, as bhartzer points out, many parts of SEO are not driven by on-page factors.
There are many legitimate reasons to want to host the site, but in this case, I would ask for a refund (partial or whole) and go with someone who knows Lotus Domino. Porting the site/data/work-to-date to a new platform will be far more costly than dumping this company and paying someone who charges a premium for SEO-on-Domino services.
Just my 2 cents,
Jason
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