Lynsperf,

I do not envy your position, since dealing with SEO companies and individuals could easily turn into a nightmare. SEO today is very different from the SEO of yesterday.

I've been in SEO for the past 20 years, and this is a field where you constantly need to be upgrading your skill set. Since I wear so many hats in my company, in the past 15 years I have reached out to many SEO companies, only to be highly disappointed.

There are many factors involved today when it comes to SEO. I would be careful when trying to blame Abelcommerce for any significant loss in sales when we're still trying to exit a global pandemic, and now the global distribution problems.

Currently, I'm using an old teacher whose SEO class I took many years ago, with mixed results. Overall, the situation was beneficial because there were many factors that were seen by other eyes, which I, personally, rectified myself.

For us, SEO, it's an internal matter, so many SEO companies today just outsource their work to many people who have difficulty communicating with each other.

Obviously, you're attempting to rank high on Google, so I will offer this advice. Google is a for-profit company that has a fiduciary obligation to increase the worth of its stockholders.

If Google feels that your site can increase Google's bottom line, it will reward you with good organic ranking.

Google has an obsession today to concentrate on the mobile portion of things, even though people may not use a mobile device to purchase your products.

I would highly recommend before hiring any company to have them do a site review that will usually run about $500 or less. Then compare the site reviews to see which company you feel comfortable with. Each company will enter into a contract with you, and you need to make sure you are on top of it, and that they are providing the services on the contract.

The last thing I will leave you with is that most of SEO companies want full access to the website, for us, this is a non-starter.

I would highly suggest that someone within that company take an SEO course so at the very least they could ask the right questions when interviewing different people.

Good luck with your journey, but from my personal experience in the past five years, the 10s of thousands that we have spent would have been better off just buying pay-per-click ads.

Best of luck
-Ray

Thanks for the fast reply.
Iam in no way blaming Able.
They are lightyears ahead of my previous ecommerce endevors.
I guess I will contact some of the other merchants in my industry and see what they recommend for SEO.

They are critical in the overall mix. Imagine my horror a year ago when I launched my site in AbleCommerce, and I saw what my site looked like on a small device, and then I started doing speed diagnosis. Although the overall design was my fault, the abundance of scripts from developers was equally to blame.

I do not want this to be an extremely long e-mail, so I'll cut to the chase.

Structure first, content second !!!!!!!!

You can have the most helpful information in the world but if your structure or foundation stinks, especially on a mobile device, you will be penalized, it's that simple.

I would forget about Google Analytics, since this tool is only useful once you start to measure traffic after a site has been structured correctly. I would learn the inside and out of Google Search Console first, as this relates to structural issues.

Besides Google page speed, which I would take with a grain of salt, you may want to look at GTmetrix.

Avoid any SEO company that starts talking about, contents, contents, and contents without first giving you a review of your foundation or the structure of your platform under a mobile device.

The sad news here is that people who know what they're doing start with a minimum fee of at least 50K to 100K.

This is an area where the business owner needs to get involved. And if you are lucky enough to find that SEO company at a reasonable price, please let us know.

Not here to discourage you, but to give you a realistic picture.
-Ray