SEO Company FirstFound.co.uk

meta keywords are entirely irrelevant in Google these days.

 

£39 per month seems very cheap and I would be very caucious as what you get for that.

 

You get what you pay for in this business! If you pay peanuts you get monkeys!

 

Who was talking about Google?

I’m simply saying “I’m far from impressed with their on page SEO”

Thanks Brian

 

Agreed. Although I used to work for one of the UK's top digital marketing agencies and they were shocking too. talk about dodgey

 

Look in SEOmoz.org for few basic questions about handing over the seo job to the company

 

If you want to get top 10 positions in Search engine you should know about SEO.
What is SEO? Search engine optimization is a strategy to get top search engine ranking which help to your website to more accurately list your site in their Search engine indexing for target keywords related to the page content. Programs for off-page optimization will help your website for search engine indexing.
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seo company

 

We have had a similar experience to many posts on this topic. Lots of calls from sales people not taking no for an answer. We run www.ourweddingmemories.co.uk which has high rankings for 'wedding photographer', 'wedding photography' etc on Google so it does seem they target sites already doing quite well.

However, at the time we were thinking about acquiring quality links to the site which would, in the main, generate direct traffic and not for the sole reason of increasing rankings although this would help anyway.

We didn't want on page seo advice as we have been doing this succesfully for ourselves and clients for a number of years.
I was assured by the sale person that they could provide a quality link building campaign which would meet our needs.

We agreed to run a 4 month campaign with reports of the links acquired and take it from there.

I signed an agreement which was simply their standard seo agreement but they said it does cover what I required. The initial fee was paid and DD set up and was told a technician would contact me.

A technician did indeed make contact to discuss my requirements and I explained my linking requirements and not on page seo.

He said he would look at it and get back to me. Around 2 weeks later a different technician rang me, apparanlty the other was away and this second guy would be looking after our contract. Again I explained the requirement for acquiring quality links and not SEO and that I would require monthly reports on the links acquired.

The 'technician' said that the main focus of FirstFOund is on-page SEO and that, although they can acquire links, this is an add-on and no reports can be provided. I explained the need for reports and he went away to speak to his manager.

I then sent an e-mail to the original sales guy telling him what had been said and referring back to our initial discussions. I got a call later that day, but not apparently due to my e-mail, to say that they do not provide the service I required and that they would give a full refund of the initial fee.

Although they agreed a refund without any fuss, which was one battle I didn't need to go through, I was of course dissappointed that it had gone this far when they clearly couldn't improve things for our site.

Please be aware that this comapny ovly offers very basic on-page seo and NO LINK BUILDING SERVICES, which is of course the major part of any seo work!!

 

Having traded since 1999 doesn't mean a lot, many scams survive for decades because they simply move on from victim to victim. To may people read what the Celebrity SEO's write and hang on every word they say and most of them don't even work in the SEO field anymore, they just write about it.

 

I got much info about this from here

 

I wish I'd come on here & asked a question like this about First Found after they called me! Unfortunately, I didn't & I'm now a couple of months into my SEO contract with them.....not being in a position to pay the £500 per month that other companies were quoting me & having tried every trick & tip I'd read on the net, but getting nowhere! I guess I was desperate for someone else to try something I didn't know.

If I had come on here though, presumably I'd have been called a spammer for the same reason, which surely puts newbies off asking legitimate questions about things they'd like advice on. After all, isn't this where legit people would come for advice as well as the spammers?

So, I've read the rest of this post with a sinking heart; It seems I've thrown yet another £800 down the toilet for nothing - exactly the same as EVERY other so called SEO company/expert I've tried. Are there ANY companies out there that offer a service that achieves anything other than just taking your money? It seems not (unless you're willing to pay the £500 a month I've been quoted previously!).

Damn!

 

Did they really cancel your contract without any fuss? I'm amazed when they spend so much time & effort trying to get you to sign up!

I've just e-mailed "my" technician & asked what the situation is re link building, as I made it very clear during my initial conversations that my site was pretty much as optimised as it could be & ranks well in Yahoo & Bing, but what was letting it down was the lack of quality inbound links for Google. So, like you, I said that good inbound links were what I needed & the salesman said that wouldn't be an issue!

In my e-mail I mentioned I'd seen a forum posting & quoted the part of your post about them not doing link building & where I stand re cancelling the contract. I have a funny feeling they won't refund me as easily!!! Was there anything particular you used/said to get a refund so "easily"?

I'd appreciate any extra tips on how you approached it.

 

I have to reply to my own comment now, as I've been pretty pleased with the improvement in Google rankings of my site since FirstFound have been involved!

I went to an outside company because my sites' ranking had gone from great to nothing almost overnight & for a year I'd been unable to get it back. I couldn't afford the £500 a month I was being quoted elsewhere, so I signed up with them.

I carried out their suggested on-page SEO (there wasn't much needed to be honest, as my site was 90% there) & then ran regular checks on the top 100 related long tail keyphrases, to see what happened.

From nowhere, I now have lots of good positions on Google for these highly searched terms, my traffic has risen & the number of sign ups has also risen.

I don't know what FF have done as they don't give you any link building reports (as mentioned previously in this forum). I can understand why they don't tell you what they've done; I would try to repeat these steps on my other sites without paying them; but on results, I'm pretty pleased with the outcome so far!

 

Hi people,

I have just spent 30 minutes on the phone to FirstFound with them trying to sell their services to me (Just sounded like the things I was already doing tbh!).

I've found all your comments very helpful, think I'll be steering clear of them!

Thanks!

Jess

P.s If any of you have any tips on how to optimise my site it'd be greatly appreciated, I'm at the end of my tether!

xx

 

What's your website URL?

 

I used to work for this company on the "techical" side, and it really is a joke. The sales team mislead unsuspecting clients into parting with their money and they then get assigned a technician. The technician then does a very basic job of on page optimisation after some initial half-arsed keyword research which generally used a geogrphical location. E.g "Coach hire in Mansfield". All the technicial then does is change the page title, description, keywords and adds in a H1 tag which includes the keywords and inserts the keywords into the page text. Then the optimisation is complete. They then phone the client to say its done and it will take a few weeks to kick in and they keep an eye on it. But really all they do is check a report which is ran monthly and send it across to the customer. Only when someone rings up complaining will any action be taken.

I hated the job. I used to dread going in everyday knowing full well I'll be on the phone all day to disgruntled clients, and when I wasn't on the phone to them, I'd be on to new clients who were really nice and friendly and I was about to do a naff job on their site. It was horrible.

As people have said previously, it is really cheap and they get a cheap service. For some, a very few, it works for them. But for others it is pointless and a waste of money. They can keep doing it though because they've been around so long, have a lot of staff and can just get by with keeping clients on for a 12 month contract before they walk away. Its a goldmine and the contract is watertight.

I worked there for 6 months before I had enough and left. I've stayed away from SEO since then, but I'm sure there are other SEO companies who do a worthwhile job.

 

Hi, my name is Jose Rincon from Ohio, United States, I came this forum looking for information to get a good advice about SEO for my new website, but unfortunately I can't find so far any good advice, I already check the Company : FirstFound.co.uk but I am not sure because I read bad news in this forum.Anybody can give a good advice for SEO. Any help it would be really appreciated.Thanks.

 

You could ask for some of their previous clients, and check their PageRank to see if they delivered, their backlinks and the authority of the backlinks, you could also ask them some simply SEO questions to find out if they are not entirely incompetent, like suggest a site, give them the title, and description and how best they would optimise it knowing the keywords they are trying to rank

 

Avoid this company. In my opinion they are rip-off merchants. In desperation for higher rankings I signed on with them five months ago. For four years our website homesdotcom had achieved no lower than page four on google. Since this company did SEO work, interest in my website has gone down. From two months onwards I have repeatedly sent them emails. After three months I advertised for help with peopleperhour. A number of people contacted me and many criticized my website enormously. Some have even told me that no SEO work has been done on the website. I am not a geek so most of what I am told is like a foreign language. I have asked for evidence from first found for any work they have done on my website. i get absolutely nowhere with them. thankfully I only signed on for six months and that ends at the end of February. I have now given them notice to give up my "contract" I am now looking at ways in which I can contact some professional body as i firmly believe that i have been conned. Strangely enough i have received from them a touting email today introducing the company and stating they can improve my google rankings! Please anyone thinking of taking on this company please do not, you will simply be wasting your money. If anyone is aware is there a professional body I can report them to apart from the police! I have copies of all emails sent to them and from them and about fifteen emails from individuals pointing out the faults with our website.

 

Hi I wish I had found this thread before we hired firstfound, we were exceptionally unhappy with the service they provided. They "managed" both our SEO and adwords account and like Peter we asked for evidence that they were working in our best interests. We've now terminated our contract with them.