I am the client. I am sure Arvind is a good guy and a good SEO and all of this is a simple misunderstanding so I would prefer not to make public the issues here unless that is what Arvind and fourm members would prefer. Gordano
you must have missed this part : Providing a client with too much (IN-DETAIL) information on how hard or easy the above mentioned tasks will be is a REFUND SPAWNER - and all the other parts of my post that stated it's NOT a good idea to release that much info. However it is necessary to provide a client with PROOF that you delivered the specifications & in some cases a brief list of how it was achieved (If requested). If you don't provide proof or any specs related documentation to your clients, thats your own business. I wish you luck with that. (Note: I am NOT an SEO consultant & have Never claimed to be, I do know the basics of SEO & include Onpage SEO in all my designs as part of the package.)
Reading the threads it looks like a case of Arvind Sivrastava not delivering what he had agreed with Gordano.
You have to keep in mind too, it's natural for clients to be critical or expect unrealistic results when they don't understand what exactly you do to achieve them. From my point of view, I'd be worried as a client if my new SERP was based on only a couple of backlinks. Those backlinks can go away anytime if the original content is purged. Content goes stale very quickly. Good SERP requires ongoing work to maintain them as you're competing against potentially hundreds of other sites that may be adding new content every day. Google clearly likes sites that add content frequently. It seems to indicate they are active participants in their site and niche. For example, I overtook a competitor of mine in a long tail term practically overnight. Their site is never updated or improved. If they were as aggressive and active as my site, they would be more competitive.
You are right for a couple of reasons: Part of marketing is the illusion that what people do is difficult, time consuming, and requires an expert. This isn't necessarily always true. The more info you volunteer, the more you take a chance of degrading the end satisfaction of the service provided. Using the KISS (keep it simple...) method with the client is a good plan. Many clients don't care about how something is done, as long as they see the results they were promised.
It should be obvious that the person you hired to do the job cares about what he does and takes pride in his work. You cannot expect, nor are you entitled to, a full refund if you obtained benefit from the service. To what degree (or %) of the payment that you benefited is another question. If he substantially complied with your specifications, he just needs to do a little more work to fully comply.
IT seems from what's been said on this thread that you agreed a set of targets which Arvind achieved. You should pay the man and honour the contract. You're coming off as a 'poorhouse tycoon'.
Lets be clear. A specification was agreed and paid for in advance. This work was only partially completed. A refund was requested in proportion to the work not done, which seems very reasonable. I note in this thread there are some SEOs who recognise that if only part of the job is done then it is clearly not correct to keep full payment - those SEOs are the ones who will most likely get repeat business. FYI the SEO in question had already agreed a partial refund, he just hasn't delivered on it, just as he hasn't on the SEO work contracted. I guess that says it all.
Interesting, though results are results. Personally, I think you can both learn from this. Firstly do not give out the exact details of what you will do for them other than calling it off page stuff and secondly, if you pay for someone to do a job, be prepared to be happy if they give you your results.
There's an old story, might be real, might not be; but, I think it's fairly appropriate here... From Snopes.com's Urban Legend Reference page: "Nikola Tesla visited Henry Ford at his factory, which was having some kind of difficulty. Ford asked Tesla if he could help identify the problem area. Tesla walked up to a wall of boilerplate and made a small X in chalk on one of the plates. Ford was thrilled, and told him to send an invoice. The bill arrived, for $10,000. Ford asked for a breakdown. Tesla sent another invoice, indicating a $1 charge for marking the wall with an X, and $9,999 for knowing where to put it." "Know Where Man" Urban Legend, hosted by snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/where.htm The point is with SEO, it's the know how rather than the process that the client is paying for. It's a huge risk for both SEO'er and client to contract based on results as it may force the SEO'er to resort to tactics that will get the client's site penalized in order to get the promised ranking. I agree with others who have said that a SEO services provider should not be required to reveal all of their tricks to clients in order to convince the clients the work has been done. The key to this transaction is whether the contract (you fellows did have some sort of written agreement didn't you?) states the desired product is increase SERPs or a list of activities that when finished should impact the SERPs. If the contracted service was to increase SERPs - seems like Gordano should pay, after all the desired result was achieved. If the contracted service was for the list which included the directory submissions, etc - there should be at least a partial refund coming Gordano's direction. (Though from this thread I'm not sure that work was or was not done.) Good luck gentlemen, I hope you resolve this. This thread gave me an idea for a blog post too: Get What You Pay For Hope someone finds it helpful.
YMC, I agree with you 100%. I paid for a list of work to be done, this work was only part completed. The lesson for me is to not pay up front unless the SEO in question has a very strong reputation. Where there is any doubt about the SEO then if you have to go ahead pay for work in smaller increments, that way if there is a misunderstanding there is less $$$ to lose for the customer and everyone moves on. Hopefully others wil benefit from reading this post. And if Arvind is a decent guy he will refund part of the payment as he agreed many weeks ago but failed to deliver.
It's just common sense. At least here in the US, no one would ever get away with keeping the whole payment under Common Law. As someone else said, you get what you pay for. Everyone should realize that there are a lot of people looking for work here that are not necessarily well backed. They are freelancers trying to make a few extra dollars in exchange for a service. We both know that anyone that expected the top quality work of a professional would not likely look for it in a forum such as this. They would go to a well established company that would probably charge 2-3X as much as they do here. In my opinion, there's a reason why people look for freelancers here: they are hoping for a service at a reasonable or below-market price. They should realize the risk is much higher here. This is a place with a big neon that says BUYER BEWARE. I wanted to get a video done last week. Someone email me with their site. It looked good. Being meticulous as I am, I looked at it closely. The user was new here. The site was brand new (registered a month or so before), no feedback on here, they are overseas. Their paypal was unverified and not credible. When told of these problems, they gave me a site of a company that "owned them". This site looked good: PR4. Corporation. On closer look in Florida corporate records, there is no record of that corporation matching the name/address on the site. No paypal account at all (was supposed to send money there). Anyone see any red flags here? I walked away. Who is going to risk hundreds of dollars in that situation. If you don't do your homework, you are playing a game of Russian roulette. David Beyer
It's still not clear from the info in this thread how he failed to deliver. What targets had you agreed that he didn't reach?
If you had agreed to get sidewides and monthly links then you shud give him reports... If you had agreed just with the results then you should do that.. Just depends on the conditions you stated before you dealt with him...
In addition to my previous assessments: Always remember that an SEO consultant that Guarantees a specific placement in the SERP's or a certain amount of traffic is 99.9% of the time a self proclaimed Guru that has NO clue what they are doing. With literally BILLIONS of pages on the net being optimized daily, there is NO way one can Guarantee a specific placement for any length of time. I have seen many pages that hit the #1 spot for a term & within 48 Hours dropped to Page #15, Simply because someone else's page was optimized a bit better 1-2 days later in order to compete as well. Traffic Guarantee's? Ok, thats just silly, even if a consultant researched the target phrase & it shows the term receives 155 searches per day doesn't mean you will get them all. There are 10 listings per page & Billions of pages for those 155 to chose from prior to visiting. If you are lucky you may get anywhere from 25%-50% if that from the 155 & even then you can't guarantee it. The point here is that one should be cautious from the start if ANY seo consultant makes either guarantee. And even if you do get the #1 spot, be prepared to spend more money in order to keep that placement. SEO is an ongoing process that never sleeps, if you don't have a full time SEO consultant, then you can pretty much count on your #1 placement disappearing very soon. At any rate, just my added 2 cents..... Good luck!
Exactly. Anyone claiming they can produce a specific result in SEO for competitive words should be avoided (RED FLAG). There is no way to do it. My keywords do the google dance on a daily basis (sometimes hourly). Mix that in with trying to rank well for more than one competive keyword and it takes a LOT of work and a LOT of luck. SEO is a FULL TIME JOB for a competitive keyword. Nobody knows exactly how SEO works. We can see results from observations but it's just a guess. There are obviously many variables. I can determine some of them by looking at my searches and see what results content is returned, but I don't have all the answers.
Hey bro.. after all they are clients.. if they were sooo nice all the time we would not call them clients.. lol..
Might be possible your client is not ready to understand your attempts. But you should be with your honor. You have done well.