Search Engine Optimization

[Mistwell]

My company does a lot of pay-per-click advertising with Google and Yahoo (Adwords and Overture). I know there is some waste and overspending on that, but I do not have the time or resources to make it better.

We also get some decent natural listings with both of those search engines, for some of our keywords. I know our website(s) need work and could get better natural listings without much trouble (and maybe by building some microsites for targeted keywords), but again I do not have the time or resources to do that.

Does anyone know of a good company that does search engine optimization?

How about a company that does pay-per-click campaign optimization?

Or any horror stories of companies I should stay away from?

[der_kluge]

Capital One used atdmt.com which I think, is Avenue-A Razorfish.

I actually worked on the Capital One Internet team for about 6 months. They also used some rather expensive software called Visual Science which tracked internet traffic.

One of the things they did (it might be industry standard, I don't know) was to put unique URLs on all the banner ID and search engine links. So, they would know, based on the URL where someone linked from.

For example, go to www.google.com and type in "capital one" and then hit search. If you click on the sponsored link, you will see a complex URL with the "external_id=" tag applied to it. This tag, denoted as "WWW_10014_1C1_SEM-Brand_Google_ZZ_ZZ_T_Home" breaks down into various piece parts, which they can use to analyze the link.

For example, the code "10014" represents the search term "Capital One". There are other search terms which are valid, and Google charges a fee based on a complex algorithm which essentially boils down into how popular or common the term might be. For example, paying for a search term like "credit card" is RIDICULOUSLY expensive. They told me. It was something on the order of like $70 per click or something insane like that. Everytime you click on a sponsored link, that company pays Google for that link.

Avenue-A Razorfish received a report (I was responsible for putting it together, among other things) that contained all the link information. I think they managed the providers for Capital One and made sure that the search engines didn't charge Capital One for more links than what Capital One was actually receiving, etc.

[Nareau]

I did some SEO for the last company I worked for. The best thing you can do is provide useful, unique content. Artificially manipulating search engine results is Evil. It's also often unwise.

If you want some casual advice, feel free to post a link and I'll happily give some semi-informed suggestions. If you're dead-set on having an SEO company do it, there's a simple way to find the best: Google "Search Engine Optimization" and see who pops up as the #1 link.

Nareau

[Mistwell]

Originally Posted by Nareau

I did some SEO for the last company I worked for. The best thing you can do is provide useful, unique content. Artificially manipulating search engine results is Evil. It's also often unwise.

If you want some casual advice, feel free to post a link and I'll happily give some semi-informed suggestions. If you're dead-set on having an SEO company do it, there's a simple way to find the best: Google "Search Engine Optimization" and see who pops up as the #1 link.

Nareau

Sure, I would be happy to post a link and get some advice!

Our primary site is:

http://www.academicapparel.com

Our secondary site (which I care less about, but it is still part of the business) is:

http://www.buyclassrings.com

I am dead set on paying someone to do it better than we can because we are spending over $40,000 a year on advertising with Yahoo and Google, and that number has got to come down or the results have got to increase.