12 replies to this topic

[lizzielu]

I have a prospect who would like a proposal for SEO. They want to be on page one of Google for outdoor furniture (4.5 million) and casual furniture (1.9 million).

Here is my question.

I know how to do the whole "there are no guarantees, other than purchasing adwords" pitch.
And, yes, I can also tell them that the more specific the keyword the better.

But do any of you realistically feel that you could get a client on page one of Google for such broad keywords.

Sometimes, I want to just tell them to save their SEO money and put it towards PPC if they "really" want to be on page one for outdoor furniture.

Am I alone in this?

Thanks, Liz

[OldWelshGuy]

Effort to reward IMO. Anything is possible, but it is a case of working out what is needed. If they are talking about google, then you can bomb it to the top. How long this one legged form of SEO will work is anyones guess though.

If it is going to take a month of solid no break link building to achieve what they want, then give them a price, and see what they say.

Why not 'garden furniture' then? Hell of a jump in traffic from Outdoor furniture' to casual furniture!

[jerry]

Liz, it would be like getting a doctor to guarantee to make you well. You pay a doctor for his/her services and you pay a SEO for his/her services.

Jerry

[OldWelshGuy]

Good analogy Jerry, scenario:

You walk into a doctor's office, say to him, 'Doc I am in real pain, I mean REAL pain. I have seen 3 pain specialists, and they have all charged me lots and failed. Can you guarantee that I will not feel this pain anymore?'

Doc says yep, $50,000 in cash in advance.

You are so painwracked that you agree, get the 50k give it to the doctor, who right away takes out a gun an shoots you dead, you didn't feel a thing, nor will you again. He kept his side of the bargain.

My point? The devil is in the detail, and be very careful of guarantees

[Steve Sardell]

They want to be on page one of Google for outdoor furniture (4.5 million) and casual furniture (1.9 million).

Hi Liz, Although there are 4m + pages competing, IMHO, it does not look as if it would be an unrealistic goal. I looked at the top ten and they are not superior. Getting the correct IBL data from G is now, more than ever, unreliable. But if you do a strong linking campaign with proper anchor text in conjunction with onpage factors then I think in 3 to 6 months you could have it there.

Sometimes, I want to just tell them to save their SEO money and put it towards PPC if they "really" want to be on page one for outdoor furniture

My thinking is they should do both, especially in the beginning. I do not believe I would use casual furniture if the company specializes in outdoor furniture, I might use patio furnitiure, deck funiture, poolside funiture and a few others. I do think they should look at an overall campaign and not rely solely on the organic listings. They can geo restrict their PPC to their immediate shipping areas. JMT

Edited by Steve Sardell, 26 July 2004 - 10:40 AM.

[Jill]

It's definitely possible if they have a good enough site to support it. However, I would never take a campaign like that if they ONLY cared about those 2 phrases. I would only do those phrases as part of a much broader campaign where they were also being optimized for the hundreds of related phrases.

That way, while things are building up, they'll at least be seeing some results. Then eventually, they will start to move up for the "money" phrases. But imo, you should never take on a campaign where they only want a couple of phrases.

[lizzielu]

Thanks all for your advice. One more thing - they are a UK company and also want to show up in Google - Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Do you have to optimize differently for these?

Thanks, Liz

[magellan]

Pages will have to be created in the native language. Otherwise it is the same.

[Denyse]

It would also help if those pages created for those languages where housed on local IPs (in the country required) with a country specific domain extention. I have been trying for ages to get a .com page housed in the US to show up in google.ca - nothing doing. I have lots of Canadian links to the site, so there is no problem ranking in yahoo.ca, but google apparently only looks at the IP.

[lizzielu]

They have separate pages for each language but they look like this:

France: www.companyname.com/html/fr
Germany: www.companyname.com/html/de

I assume you mean,

www.companyname.fr
www.companyname.de

Is there a wordtracker-like software for German and French?
Wouldn't I also have to do separate keyword analysis for each language, or just make assumptions from the English results?

Thanks for your help.

[eklages]

Wouldn't I also have to do separate keyword analysis for each language, or just make assumptions from the English results?

I would highly recommend it. People in different areas search differently. And in many languages, phrases are worded differently too, avoid doing a direct translation b/c you could get in a lot of trouble w/ it.
The idea of seo'ing a site for multiple languages is a bit mind boggling, see if you can get an outsource company w/in the country (or an individual) to help you out.

[Randy]

Liz, you may want to have a look at this thread started by Ian. He's got some really interesting observations and info there regarding country-specific issues.

Even though the main thrust of the thread is dealing with .ca searches, you can extrapolate safely it to other country-specific circumstances.

[BrianR]

They have separate pages for each language but they look like this:

France: www.companyname.com/html/fr
Germany: www.companyname.com/html/de

I assume you mean,

www.companyname.fr
www.companyname.de

Lizzielu

This could be a problem iro Google, as Denyse pointed out. If a user clicks on 'Pages from Germany only', then the site must be hosted on a German IP in order to be included in the search results; preferably, it should also have a proper .de tld.

BrianR