Greetings

Brand new to this game. Have started my own business following the collapse of employer (MG Rover). Business is online advertising for used cars. Bit like Autotrader but I specialise in the West Midlands offering used car dealers an alternative service to their local press. I donr compete with Autotrader directly - in fact I'm about to be listed as one of their 'Approved Partner Sites'

The service is more than just advertising, it's a full sales & marketing advice service. I've worked in Marketing & Cars for 30 years, so this is my way of using that experience to earn mysel a crust.

I've joined this forum because I need all the help and advice I can get with SEO and traffic building.

I employ an SEO expert but ..... not convinced he is doing the business. I would also like to understand a lot more about the web as I see it becoming a more integral part of everyones lifes. It's also a brilliant way to exchange info, advice and help.

You also use vBulletin which I really like.

Hi and welcome!
we have an seo expert, and you can have him too for £4 a month, prices go up after december though!

Welcome to the forums,

How much does this 'seo expert' currently charge?

£500 initial site assesement & development with web designers plus £80 per month ongoing optimisation.

Thanks
CharlesR

and how are your rankings? Best bet would be to fire his ass, and with the guidence of rob do it yourself. imagine the money you would save, where you could use it for Pay per click and additional advertisng..

Rankings are crap although I am starting to get some traffic from organic searches on MSN and Yahoo but none on Google. Without the PPC I get about 30 hits a day from around half a dozen or so unique users. Nothing like what I need.

I'm going to have a serious chat with my SEO in the New Year and may take you up on your offer. Worry is I'm not a web designer so you would need to keep it REALLY simple for me.

In the meantime, I'm going to subscribe to your site (£40 wasn't it). I think that is very good value for money as I suspect I could at least learn an awful lot from you guys and this forum.

Any possibility this gets me a link to my site too? If not, what else do I need to do?

Thank you very much for your help so far.

£500 that was for the creation of the site?

Now I'm feeling depressed. Nope, the site was built by someone else. The £500 was what he charges to evaluate the site, recommend a strategy and brief the web designers on implementation.

Beginning to think I've been screwed?

C

yeah....with a cordless drill.... OUCH!

Damn :/