RANT: I am Sick of SEO Guys From DP Forum. The SEO Industry is Being Ruined!!!

This is a rant... If you think you should not be reading this, please do not... By all means I will thrash the so called SEO guys who provide SEO services without any actual clue to what SEO is....

I have been going through the threads in the forum and helping people out... You can see that I just joined recently, but I have been trying my max to help others out.. Especially in the SEO field. The problem is many people ask very basic questions which has already been answered in the past at least a 1000 times. Still there are people who help with answering questions like what is SEO just to increase post count. I am fed up of asking people to do a forum search or atleast doing a bit of leg work by themselves.

The funny thing is that many of these people who do not even know the basic SEO factors are providing SEO services by themselves. It's no reason that SEO is an industry frowned upon by many business owners.

3 months before, I had a client who cancelled his SEO contract with me. When I asked the reason, he told me that he discovered a forum called digital point and got someone to do things for 1/10th the price. I couldn't argue as I knew how much people value each and every $. So I wished him good luck. Exactly 3 months back they came back to me asking for help and I asked them what happened. It seems that the guy who promised the job at a cheaper rate ran of with the money. He seems to be banned here. But, the money is gone.

That is when I began looking at DP forum and saw lot of scam offers. I do not say that SEO cannot be cheap or that people should not offer low priced SEO... But for heavens sake provide services which you really know and dont expect to make a quick buck. If you really want to make money, take you time to learn about SEO and then only after testing it out for yourself and if you are sure you can take on a client project do it...

There are lots of free resources where you can learn about SEO. read this stick thread if you want to know about SEO
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=413544

Please.... Do not provide SEO services when you dont know the basics of it. I invite you all to share your experiences hiring or providing services in DP. I know there are quite a few people who are genuine. My rant is not about those guys, but about the rest.

Note: try to avoid pointing fingers at anyone in particular. I just want people to know that there are some ethics that they need to follow when doing business. Take money from someone else only if you can provide vale for the money the client paid.

The SEO industry is getting a bad name because of many of the scammers out there trying to cheat webmasters/business owners just to make quick money by taking advantage of their ignorance

 

Very good points - I get very annoyed by this too. As a poster of 3 years standing, i've found myself answering a very basic query, assuming it was from a total newbie, then looked again and seen it was from someone offering SEO services. The same thing happens in the adwords forum.

 

Yeah.. Sadly I see that DP forum is the one with the most number of people like this.

 

I am with you, there are some that takes the money and run and there are some that really does not know what they are doing, they are more of just link builders than SEO Professional, they use the power of cheap offer to attract clients, but don't worry, bigger clients dont fall to these traps, only small timers, so find your big clients and focus on them.

 

Yep... I was planning to find SEO client here.. But with the multitude of cheap offers, we aint gonna get high paying clients here. Let's see if there are legit clients in here who can use real SEO services.

SEO is basically put 100 and reap 1000$ policy. Sometimes it may be put 1000$ to reap 10000$... however people do not see the big picture and go for 10$ offer only to realize that Google banned them for shady link practices.

 

I dont want to judge anybody here. But as far as i know people like you said above are ironically comes from your country.

I said mostly, not all of them.

 

Yeah. That is the sad truth!!!

 

Unfortunately i agree too and i think its really right.

 

Anybody have any experience with hiring such guys? I think these guys will have a tough time convincing people over at DP. Maybe they will target people with little or no knowledge about SEO

 

I completely agree with you and your opinion some people only join the forum for backlinks to their site but DP is the best source for getting the all information of SEO and it's tactics. I am learning lots of things from DP.

 

Those are my favourites. In one forum, it's "what's anchor text" and in another it's "I'll get you to #1 in Google in 5 days" - hilarious.

 

Rip-offs exists in any other business too. There is always a chance to run in trouble if you send money to someone you don't know, without first making sure this person has the right references.

Maybe it would be a good idea to establish a review system for SEO consultants in this forum, so members can leave comments in their public profile.

 

There is a problem though. Not everyone is an expert here and I have seen many people giving out completely wrong advice. Its usually those who provide such services in this forum, but still. People can be misled.

Yes.. These are the kind of posts that really made me write this. Legit SEO consultants like us are devalued because of these people... I am sorry if my frustration has insulted anyone. i know there are some great guys here. I am just venting it out on the others (You know if I am talking about you!!!)

I discussed with shown. He told that its practically impossible since there are too many posts.

What I did was just took one established member here and sold him my review first. I am planning to wait until i achieve success for him and then use his testimonial to gain good clients over here

Do you think that if more and more people begin acting like this, the SEO industry will soon fall out?

 

Thumbs up, totally agree with you...many seo service providers only have very basic seo knowledge...it is not enough to get ranked for highly competitive keywords....

 

Some SEO providers have good knowledge. But the problem is they rarely have practical knowledge. I knew one person in my SEO team when I worked for a company who was appointed after interview. When he was give a project, he came to me asking very silly doubts. I started questioning his authenticity and finally came to know that he only learned things from a SEO Book he downloaded off the net. Sadly that will never hep you become a SEO provider

 

Three or four years ago, Digital Point had a good number of skilled SEO professionals posting here. One of them, the late Dan Schulz (R.I.P.), was extremely knowledgeable and very willing to offer sound SEO advice on DP. And there were certainly other skilled professionals here doing the same.

More recently, it seems, lots of the pros have bailed out and are not found posting here anymore. In their place I find an increasing number of posts with erroneous, misleading, sometimes harmful advice. It is getting increasingly rare, for example, in the "Search Engine Optimization" forum, to find threads with consistently accurate advice. And that will only further the tendency of the true professionals to get frustrated and bail out of DP.

 

Probably the membership count as well as the traffic of this forum have quadrupled over the last years and it would not be wise a to publicly unfold the best SEO secrets anymore.

 

Grow up, it's what a real life looks like. If you want high pay client, build up your reputations. If you like to buy cheap services, prepare for scammers.

 

You get what you pay for. Just be carfull who you do business with.

 

I think if DP goes the paid route it might increase the quality of members. However, I dont think Shawn will be doing it because a huge % of his customer base would vanish by then