Should we fire our SEO Vendor?

[fassa]

I am not saying the budget is over the top ... I am saying that if they are spending it for the services they listed it is not well spent.

[activitysuper]

One thing I will say is targeting that many keywords in one go is way to much, take 5 of the keywords, work on ranking them first, then once they are ranked, start on the next 5 and at the same time keep maintaining the first.

[fassa]

You should definitely find another vendor that does not use spam techniques because the recent google panda update really hits them very hard.

[activitysuper]

Can you throw one of your keywords your targeting into the mix, this will allow others to give you an indication on what type of link building worked for competitors and thus an idea what kind of link building you should be doing.

[RikkiD22]

I completely agree. For that budget I would expect a select amount quality links rather than a large quantity of spammy ones, but who knows... maybe the company is working on relationships to get some really good quality links and is just doing the run of the mill directories in the mean time (playing devils advocate here a little because I don't believe that is the case).

I think the on page SEO is just as vital too. If the website in question is the one in the OP profile then I would question that a little too.

The homepage seems to be targeting 3 key phrases plus the brand name which isn’t ideal, especially not with very competitive key terms.

I could go onto the categories too - you have the category which is targeting the key phrase for men, women and children when there are separate sections for each which could target the male, female and child’s keywords while the main category page targets the general term.

I think in 6 weeks it can be difficult to judge the link building strategy but taking the on page SEO into account I would say you might be better changing...

[fassa]

I totally agree with him here.

[fassa]

Yep ... it is a public secret that once u rank first for some keywords and people get to know you you start ranking automatically for others too because people spread the word. And optimizing the next 5 is easier and thus less costly.

[KeriMorgret]

Also feel free to create a private question and ask for a second opinion from the Moz staff and associates. Those questions aren't indexed, and they're not viewable to anyone who is not Moz staff or associate, and you can share your URL and other details there if you would like.

[Dr-Pete]

I think that's a great clarification. Paying $20-25K for someone to build authoritative, trustworthy links and content to drive you to the top on competitive keywords could be a bargain. Paying that for someone to create junk is worse than a rip-off - it could kill your rankings. Off-page (1)-(8) all look low-value to me, and (9) is ambiguous.

[DougRoberts]

The "plan" doesn't look much like a plan... more like a list of (as already mentioned, low value) seo tactics to me.

Has anyone suggested tackling some less competitive, but related keyword terms first? It's easier to climb the tree from the bottom than to try and jump onto the top of it and you get to pick some low-hanging fruit on the way up.

What is important to the business - ranking for these highly competitive terms or more traffic/conversions now. Don't lose site of the business goals.

If you look at the sites that are currently ranking for your competitive search terms, can you honestly say that your site, your content delivers better value to the potential visitors and deservers to rank up there?

[SEO-Doctor]

Is that one of Distilled's link  building packages?  

[JohnW-UK]

This made me smile! HA