Hey everyone, just wanted to vent some frustration and find out how you all feel about the subject. We are a start up SEO business and are constantly getting calls from other "SEO companies" that clearly have no idea about the subject at all. We know this because they keep telling us we need to have out site SEOed and we appear pretty much at the top of googles listings... hmmm can't be that bad then surely. Apart from the annoyance of having to answer the phone to these people every day I'm concerned they are giving SEO a bad name. I mean if enough businesses go with these companies and get bad advice and a service which does nothing to improve their rankings they may decide to ignore it in the future altogether. Views please
This is something that we can't avoid and can't help either. The competitiveness is so high in the SEO field that the costs are decreasing for services which in turn is reducing the quality. However many webmasters don't bother to think a bit more about this before just ordering 'cheap seo services' and end up losing their investment, time and efforts. What you're mentioning is something out of your control. It's a free world and people will do what they want to do as long as it is legal and is bringing them some money. The best you can do is concentrate more on your business and deliver more towards the customers/clients you have.
Yeah I guess you're right - just wish you weren't... All we can do is try and provide the service our customers deserve and hope the good vibes spread
I don't necessarily mean "illegal" as such. With SEO its a bit of a grey area. First off I mean companies that don't really know what they are doing and take on customers having done a days SEO course which doesn't even scratch the surface of the subject. They take the customers money and don't deliver what they have promised so the customer goes away with the view that SEO just doesn't work. Also those that raise rankings unnaturally by using hidden keywords, cloaking, link farms, three way linking.... the list goes on and on. They use these techniques to try and fool google and it doesn't do anything to raise the profile of SEO if they are caught. Hope this explains it for you...
These type of people are taking their chances against Google using un-ethical seo methods. They some time wins and many time loose this. Its a saying: one who get caught is a thief, similar thing applies to them. If caught they are Black hat if not they are SEO experts
The line is paper thin. Everyone wants their site to succeed and wishes to actively work towards that. Google doesn't particularly care what you want, as long as, everything appears to be growing naturally. Patience is the key.
The worst one I saw was really close to being an outright lie but clever in how it mislead customers: "We'll get you to the first page in Google for £100", implying they'd guarantee a natural first page result (yawn) but then it turns out they actually start an adwords campaign. The worst part is it probably makes money. It seems most businesses just don't understand enough about seo to spot the bad guys. Perhaps consumers will become more savvy in a few years & just like the actual snake oil salesmen of old they'll die off in the face of wary customers.
Similar scam to the people who say that they will get you 1,000 visitors a day and then unleash bots onto your website to boost the traffic numbers.
Nope, rankings don't typically stick and I seem to get a range of clients that have had to endure this sort of thing. It is pretty easy to spot that work. I am surprised how many companies over seas spam my contact form though, offering the usual nonsense offered in the services section. Nigel
a good solution is to meet personally with the intended individuals offering their SEO service... then you can evaluate whether you feel they are legit....
Most SEO experts will use any SEO method, regardless if it's white, gray or even black hat SEO. As long as they know it works, then it should be used. There are mainly two things SEO experts consider which are 1) get rank higher in the SERPs and 2)don't get banned by the search engines. Even the whitest of the white SEOptimizers use black hat techniques because this is the core concept of SEO- to manipulate the search engines to make websites rank higher.