What happens if I only do on-site optimization?

[stockman]

What happens if I only do on-site optimization for a website that targets the local community? Say I am working with a hair salon. There is 4 other competitors with websites that has 5-7 static pages.

I get paid $500 for on-site optimization ONLY. I tell them that on-site alone is not enough to dominate. They will still definitely have an advantage over the competitors, but it really depends on how much people visit and talk about them on the internet through media outlets such as facebook.

I tell them I can help setup their social media profile (twitter/facebook/youtube) for an additional $250. They decline.

Given the outcome, how much leverage does the company I work with have over the competitor whose sites are not SEO-optimized?

The company I work with will have a blog and will update it with useful information, but their copy is not revised to be truly targeted.

They are keeping the site updated with tutorial/advice/guide blog postings twice a month. Whereas the competitors never update their sites. How much chances do they have to rank #1 locally on Google and BING? What might effect the ranking? Is this even possible?

 

[imupnow]

why ask them $250 for setting up social profiles ..thats robbery and to answer your question ..they wont get far with just on site seo thats only half of the work they need off site seo if they ever want a chance on getting on the first page..plus depending on the keyword competition

 

[dinkish]

Agreed. They'd be foolish to pay you to optimize their site and blog.

 

[igniteimages]

Bit harsh on the guy. There is nothing wrong for charging for services and setting up social profiles for a company isn't (or shouldn't) be a question of logging on and setting up an account.

With low competition - 4 competitors - I'd think on-page optimisation combined with continually added content will be fine. I've seen it happen to a site that I created in a local niche earlier this year. It took a while to build up a bit of momentum but even now ranks #1 for a broader term to that targeted.

One key issue you will find is that the company will get bored with updating their site and so they may lose momentum. Also bigger companies may be targeting that locality as well as companies actually there.

That said it wouldn't take much off page SEO to give a kick start to proceedings.

 

[Peter Ngo]

i personally don't see anything wrong with the pricing, but with on page alone, they will go to nowhere. so yes, you should have futher explaination, because if they dont have good result, you will be in trouble.
Hope that helps.
Peter

 

[iodalg]

It's not impossible to rank only with on-site optimisation, how does their competitors backlink profile look?

 

[m2bsolutions]

When you are doing only on site optimization for your site than it is not good for your site off site optimization is also important you cant get rank without off site optimization.

 

[Emp1!]

 

[TheGreyMatter]

Since the competition doesn't looks hard, the present on-page SEO optimization and regular updated content sounds good and might get you to #1 but again if any of the competitor starts building quality backlinks for their website, you could get down anytime hence it always suggested to work on both proper on-page and off-page optimization to achieve long term rankings.

 

[Abstroose]

It depends on the competitor's backlink profile. They might seem like weak competitors, but if they've got some decent backlinks then it's unlikely you client's site will outrank them purely by on-page.

 

[david543]

On site optimization is a very important part of optimizing your site but if you are trying to get rank only by the on site optimization then it is not good for you. Off page optimization is also very important for the site.

 

[Unchained]

I find that using only on site optimization can rank your website for various longtail's easier IF your website has gained some sort of authority over the years. But most of the case, you'll need backlinks or social presence to add more juice.

 

[hpv222]

I would be truly surprised if you managed to rank the site for any medium to high competition keyword with on-site optimization only.

And forget about twitter and facebook, but you should be able to easily sell them on YouTube - this is one niche that I am 99.99% certain it gets crazy hits on YouTube. There are probably gazillion girls searching for hair tips, hair styles, hair products and whatnot right now; rank a few videos for some solid KWs and you get stable traffic to the site, might not be millions of hits, but taffic well worth getting IMO

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

What I would suggest you do is:

1. Evaluate the offsite SEO of all the competitors
2. Social presence of all the competitors
3. Keyword and traffic stats for each of the competitors

After you have all this, put it in a nice PowerPoint presentation and show your clients what, at the moment, their competitors have, how long it would take you to get them to that stage, and at what cost.

Once they have all this information, they can calculate how long it would take them to make their money back and you might actually get them as a long term client.

 

[UrsuAke]

What happens if I only do on-site optimization for a website that targets the local community?

Matty C will be happy and he'll write a thank you letter.

For a real advice, follow what BTB wrote. He's spot on.

 

[pome10]

I think you should do a research like BTB wrote (if you present a research to your customers, they will take your job seriously), then you can make a plan to at least match your clients competitors. When you match the competitors, you could plan how to better its results.

PD: Sorry my english is not well.

 

[Amazing Grace]

Both on-page SEO and off-page SEO must be implemented for the success of any sites.

 

[proson]

Well, backlinks are the rules to rank good in Google. On page SEO may help a bit but I generally doubt it will have any effect.
Doing social profile alone, will not do much good on the rankings.

You need to have a better link profiles to get their site rank better place.

I will ask what is your goal for this exercise and will suggest them to do link building as well and
not just on page SEO

 

[sin_tzu]

The best analogy in my opinion is that On Site gets the car ready for the race, and Off Site is the gas in the tank. If you're just fixing up their site and doing On Site optimization to get their car ready for the race, but not putting any gas in the tank (off site), you're not going to take your client far. Catch my 'drift'?

 

[Nigel Farage]

1. Evaluate the offsite SEO of all the competitors
2. Social presence of all the competitors
3. Keyword and traffic stats for each of the competitors

If they won't pay $250 for social media, only pay $500 for onsite optimization, and apparently aren't interested in spending money on off-site optimization, how likely is the OP to get back the value of his time doing this presentation? It's good advice right up to the point where you think about the likelihood of getting any kind of ROI.

A flat rate of $500 buys you cookie-cutter SEO. They aren't qualified to tell you whether they want on-page or off-page; that's your job. I don't know how the situation evolved to this point, but guess would be that you've had to sacrifice some of "what's best for them" in order to maintain the opportunity to get "what's good for you".

The reality of business in general, most particularly when dealing with uninformed local business owners with limited budgets.

I'd like to restructure the entirety of the proposition. It's not a question of on-site vs. off-site, it's a question how how best to spend a $500 budget. That $500 buys a block of the local SEO's time, and how best to use that time is the question.

1) Minimal keyword analysis. Identify the primary 1 or 2 keywords, more than likely "<cityname> <hair salon>" and "<hair salon> <city name>"
2) H1 text of the Home Page being "<business name> <primary keyword>"
3) 10 or so of the top-tier Local Citations, to include GP, Yelp, SP, YP, etc...
4) Short and detailed report on why the top 3 competitors in your clients niche are at places A, B and C, and what steps would need to be taken in order to make your client competitive with them.

No YouTube videos, no social media, no in-depth keyword analysis, no in-depth report on the entire niche and the methods used to rank businesses in various cities, no in-depth report on the local niche, and the methods used to rank businesses in that particular city, no link pyramids, no backlinks, no in-depth on-site SEO, no optimized images, no CDN, no off-line marketing advice, no nothing else other than what's been posted above.

Standard, basic, cookie-cutter. Spend a couple of days earning your $500 to the best of your ability, and move on to the next client. You aren't a charity, and you aren't responsible for your client's limited budget, bad decision making, etc... Give them the best advice you can in as short of a time as possible, do the best work you can within the budget that they have and MOVE ON. It's not a career, it's just one business. There are thousands of them out there, literally. Go get them.

I'll also add that Yelp charges upwards of $1000 just for local citations. That's a global industry standard, and all Local SEO's need to use that as a reference point when estimating what the value is of the various Local SEO services.