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For the sake of others reading this and making sense, I dont consider 7ish searches a day as 'huge in comparison'. That is low, period. It's no better than a keyword with 1 a day, really. I don't want people to think that that amount of searches a day is what they should be considering.

Attainable with decent traffic, yes.

I just wondered why you thought it had huge traffic when it doesn't.

'laptop backup' has very low competion. It's what I would consider a 'walk in the park' (easy) keyword to rank on Google page 1 for however, I wouldn't chase a keyword that has less than 10 searches a day (as an exact phrase) like this one, except where my only product was a backup product such as Carbonite, in which case, I would be chasing all the back-up related keywords since there won't be too many to choose from.

Unfortunately now that new layout of Google's local listings take up most of page one, your position for 'it support london' is now top of page 2.

@ Drian, the original post was asking about experiences on having used an seo company, and not how SEO works.

And that just happens to be you?

I still think Stuart was kept in for entertainment value, not because he actually managed to bluff his way. The programme researches aren't that dim and will have saved the 'telecoms license' classic for last night's shoot. It makes it that bit more entertaining! At his expense of course but he deserved it, he laid himself wide open to it. He's almost a scammer really, claiming to have telecoms license when he doesn't.

I didn't notice Stella 'til last week; thought she was pretty boring and stayed in the background a lot. I think Chris might win it as he dares to get involved at every stage and accepts what works and what doesn't, whereas some won't try in case they get the chop.

My gripe is SEO companies who use broad search results to impress the naive buyer, and worse still, propose or agree on keywords that do not have a decent amount of searches per day (except where it's niche and/or long tail, and that this is explained to the client beforehand).

Obviosuly if after that they still insist on paying you to get them to Google page 1 for 'dancing green elephants in walthamstow' then you've done your best. However I have yet to see anyone part with their money for a rubbish keyword after it has been explained to them.

There was a good explanation about the use of hyphens in domains but I can't recall where it was but no, avoid if possible, and ideally just use one hyphen if really necessary. There are times when a hyphen would be better to use, for other reasons not related to seo.

And in the extensions, use a hyphen rather than an underscore, to separate your words in the extension. SEF URL's will appear this way automatically in mosty cases though I have seen them generated with underscores.

You can only use a hyphen in a domain name, not an underscore not any other special character.

Underscore's can however be used in the URL extension e.g. stevesgoldenwidgets.co.uk/my_great_widget

However, I would always advise using no hyphens in the domain, and only hyphens in any extensions.

If you don't optimise the site with keywords, nothing good will happen for you as far as search engine traffic is concerned. It will be as dead as a doormouse (no pun intended).