Hi Mike, I see the relevnace of clean URL's, and SH404SEF strips out a lot of the clag - as we have found out.

I was purely asking whether the inclusion of index.php would be that detramental to my positioning.

None the less I will go through this exercise shortly.

I've read a lot on the forums about SEO and there is a lot that contradicts each other. Indeed looking at google forums there is a lot of contradictions on how google places importance on certain things.

We've spent time on content, title tags, meta tags and descriptions and the tools I have used so far have rated us on average at 94 - 98%.

We're also looking at quality links at the moment and are in the process of implementing this - not number of links, just quality ones.

We have literally just gone live so I'm not expecting a first page ranking just yet, I know it's something that will take time to get right and I agree that I will need to outsource this. However I know people who have spend hundreds on this with consultants who know little or less than me !! So now I have to choose a reputable consultancy... know any ??


Thanks

Lee

Here's a long read with my take on SEO companies.

Personally I would rarely recommend a consultancy for SEO. The reason being that to survive in the business they have to make big promises, and this more often than not leads to going beyond normal seo practices. 5 years ago this maybe worked, as many companies found ways to fool search engines. Google are so hot on this now that doing these things can lead to the site being removed from index. Google don't do it to be kind to others, they do it because such practices ruin the search results.

Two clients I've dealt that used SEO companies had interesting experiences. One of the companies charged monthly ($20-$30 a month I think), the other charged only if the site went up the rankings. Neither of these sites were highly ranked (which is why they used the companies). In both cases when the clients ended the contract the site went down the rankings. Through my advice they didn't panic (too much!) and waited, instead of rushing to rejoin the SEO company. In both cases, after a few weeks the sites were back to similar positions.

The reasons were so clear to me. Both sites had extremely strong competition, and were never going to be on page 1 without a completely SEO focused site from start to finish. Of course, the SEO companies had told them to be patient and with the work the companies did, time would make the difference. Of course that wasn't how it was as to do anything serious they needed to change the site content to beat the competition. But the SEO companies knew they got paid monthly and would get as much as they could (who can blame them).

SEO is really quite simple, but over time clever companies have managed to make it sound extremely complicated. The days of link farms, invisible links and blackhat methods has finished (as least from Google's point of view). So an SEO company / individual nowadays MUST be a content focused company / individual, who understand(s) that priority number one is the site itself, and that SEO is not one thing but a whole range of things, with some being more appropriate than others in different situations, which when applied well can make a difference.

Often the best company / individual to do the SEO is the developer.

A final point is, if you see any company that guarantees page 1 for any site, cross them off your list immediately. This is impossible to guarantee unless they know the site and know what competition there is.

Now I understand why some people choose how to make money online rather than spending time on forums.

Hi,
My 2 cents (I took our web design company from 58 to 3 on a Google search for "Portland Web Design" in about 4 months. Also a very competitive search phrase for the region I am in - might try ranking for "Gay Bar San Francisco" LOL. The most important thing I learned and used in the process is back-linking through article distribution. You just write short (300) word keyword enhanced articles with your keyword phrase as the link (anchor links) and distribute them to publishers with "robot do follows" (or else you wont get the link juice) and high PR (page rank). There are tools to ease the process (Unique Article Wizard) that will help "automate" the process. I have a list of high PR sites to post to but is at my office. You can find it where I got it at black hat world dot com. Under the "white hat" section and just search. If you have any ?'s just contact me and I'll try to help. freshconcepts at gmail. good luck.

Also on forums with anchor text links like the post above me (2 up) "make money online" HaHaHa he is in his own self serving way showing you how.......haha.