How an LA SEO Company Saved my business!
A search engine optimization companies are like a dime a dozen, you can find them everywhere specially here in LA. Before I started The Techies, I ran a software company. You would think as a business owner I would be very well versed in the art of SEO and online marketing. The fact is I wasn't. One day I saw an Instagram ad for a company offering Los Angeles Web design services, now I thought my website was great so no need to change it up but I knew I could be doing more to receive traffic.
My initial Contact
After Seeing their ad I reached out to Fusing Marketing, to speak about how I can get more people to my website. They spoke about SEO, Social Media, Pay Per Click, and email marketing. All formats I had heard of but never bothered to really do the research. I told them I would get back to them, but I really just wanted to know what I needed to do so I can do it on my own.
Homemade SEO
I went and decided I would read all about this 'SEO' and how I could start applying it to my business. I read so much that by brain hurt. Heres what I got, Google has a ranking system that surprising enough is not actually arbitrary. You have to try to rank, thats where SEO comes in. An SEO campaign is a complicated cocktail of backlinks, content, social signals, blog comments, more content all things that if you're a busy business owner like myself are too time consuming.
That didn't stop me, I attempted to set up my own SEO campaign, I thought I could be slick and I looked up SEO shortcuts... Introducing Black-hat SEO a form of SEO known to hike up your rankings tremendously, but at the risk of serious consequences from the all mighty Google. Black hat consist of buying links, duplicate content, fake profiles and comments, fake traffic and social signals. Lets Just say I went black-hat crazy. I went from no where in the top ten pages of Google to #8 overall in the span of 2 weeks. For anyone who is familiar with SEO, this is damn near impossible but thanks to the 'awesome' Black-hat methods I learned it was real. My rankings fluctuated between 8 and 4 I was getting a ton of calls, business was booming. this lasted about a month, in retrospect thats usually how often it takes google to reindex sites, and crawl for new content.
When Shit Hits The Fan
One Morning I wake up and my website was nowhere on the top 100 pages ... I was furious, then I check my email and there is a message from Google saying 'Your website has been penalized' I looked all over the internet to try and find a solution, and it all pointed to all of those shady 'Black-hat' tactics I had used.
With no choice, I call up the guys I had spoke to about a month earlier from Fusing Marketing. I explained my situation, and they seemed to know exactly what was happening. Apparently Google's Algorithm update picked up on my shady activities and knocked me off my pedestal. The guys gave me a complimentary website audit, and they were able to pin point everything that was wrong and ultimately reverse the process.
After that I jumped on board with them for a campaign, and it didn't happen in a month but by the course of 6 months I was at the top of the Google rankings for 8 out of 10 keywords.
Moral of the story, if you don't have time to do SEO the right way which many business owners like myself don't... Then consider getting a company or agency to handle that for you, now that I know what it's like to run a business with SEO I don't think you can ever convince me not to.
My initial Contact
After Seeing their ad I reached out to Fusing Marketing, to speak about how I can get more people to my website. They spoke about SEO, Social Media, Pay Per Click, and email marketing. All formats I had heard of but never bothered to really do the research. I told them I would get back to them, but I really just wanted to know what I needed to do so I can do it on my own.
Homemade SEO
I went and decided I would read all about this 'SEO' and how I could start applying it to my business. I read so much that by brain hurt. Heres what I got, Google has a ranking system that surprising enough is not actually arbitrary. You have to try to rank, thats where SEO comes in. An SEO campaign is a complicated cocktail of backlinks, content, social signals, blog comments, more content all things that if you're a busy business owner like myself are too time consuming.
That didn't stop me, I attempted to set up my own SEO campaign, I thought I could be slick and I looked up SEO shortcuts... Introducing Black-hat SEO a form of SEO known to hike up your rankings tremendously, but at the risk of serious consequences from the all mighty Google. Black hat consist of buying links, duplicate content, fake profiles and comments, fake traffic and social signals. Lets Just say I went black-hat crazy. I went from no where in the top ten pages of Google to #8 overall in the span of 2 weeks. For anyone who is familiar with SEO, this is damn near impossible but thanks to the 'awesome' Black-hat methods I learned it was real. My rankings fluctuated between 8 and 4 I was getting a ton of calls, business was booming. this lasted about a month, in retrospect thats usually how often it takes google to reindex sites, and crawl for new content.
When Shit Hits The Fan
One Morning I wake up and my website was nowhere on the top 100 pages ... I was furious, then I check my email and there is a message from Google saying 'Your website has been penalized' I looked all over the internet to try and find a solution, and it all pointed to all of those shady 'Black-hat' tactics I had used.
With no choice, I call up the guys I had spoke to about a month earlier from Fusing Marketing. I explained my situation, and they seemed to know exactly what was happening. Apparently Google's Algorithm update picked up on my shady activities and knocked me off my pedestal. The guys gave me a complimentary website audit, and they were able to pin point everything that was wrong and ultimately reverse the process.
After that I jumped on board with them for a campaign, and it didn't happen in a month but by the course of 6 months I was at the top of the Google rankings for 8 out of 10 keywords.
Moral of the story, if you don't have time to do SEO the right way which many business owners like myself don't... Then consider getting a company or agency to handle that for you, now that I know what it's like to run a business with SEO I don't think you can ever convince me not to.