SEO Belfast

I just read 6 reasons why ‘I’d hate to be an SEO’ by Gavin over at IrelandSEOMarketing and it got me thinking.

On the contrary I’d love to be a full time SEO consultant. I’ve spent the last eight years promoting websites and although certainly not an expert by any stretch of the imagination I do have a good deal of knowledge and an interest when it comes to ranking in Google. There are no great hidden secrets to becoming fairly proficient in SEO. Google sets out the guidelines for webmasters and like many things on the net there’s plenty of support out there from people who know better and are willing to share. If you’re willing to work incredibly hard (I’m writing this article at 5.00 am on a Monday morning before I start client work) and have a passion for what you do then the benefits definitely out do the negatives.

Making cleanly coded crawlable sites, that have been researched against their competition and analysed for their keywords, with good content and backlinks are the backbone basics to helping a website perform.

Dealing with clients is part and parcel of any job. Always set out the parameters and make sure the client has realistic expectations. Personally I would underplay what can be achieved rather than oversell it. If they want guarantees they can buy a link or banner ad.

In the North a lot of companies particularly web design companies offer SEO as a standard buzzword. Though if you do a bit of research it’s pretty easy to work out that there is very little real commitment to putting this into practice even for their own company websites. The market is ripe for a company in the North to lead the way. There’s also plenty of regional keyword pickings to be had.

If you can deliver then you can set your own professional price provided it’s within reason. Being an SEO consultant is well paid and if you get good clients and provide quality work then you’ll be worth your wait in gold.

The more successful campaigns you put together then the more word will spread and the more job offers you’ll get. It’s the same for the cowboys, the more disgruntled clients they have the more people will hopefully be aware to avoid them like the plague.

Every professional has client problems, pricing issues and competitors. Solely based on the lack of competition it’s a great time to be an SEO consultant in N.Ireland. The market is definitely growing with website owners becoming more and more aware of what search engine marketing is and how their site has been poorly promoted in the past.

I’ve spent the last week working on what should be a fairly straightforward booking system using PayPal as the payment provider. I’ve been using the PayPal Sandbox to test the code and I’ve encountered very strange and confusing results.
There doesn’t seem to be any logic to what happens when the payment is completed and I’m returned to the confirmation page.

If I’ve selected ‘UK’ as the country I get a ‘the parameter is incorrect’ and if I select ‘Aruba’ as the country and enter the same details except I enter ‘Not sure’ for the state rather than Antrim then the confirmation page shows the correct message i.e. ‘Thank you for booking’.

If anyone can explain this then I’d be very glad to hear from you. I’ve posted this issue on the pdncommunity forum and am still waiting for a proper explanation.

Today I’ve completed the initial design for HouseBuyers365 and the site has gone live.

If you’d like to sell your house quickly in the UK HouseBuyers365 are keen to purchase it no matter what condition it’s in.

In relation to the site any constructive criticism is always welcome. The next step is to push the site on the net, get it ranking well for it’s keywords in the search engines and get as many qualities backlinks as possible.