I'm looking at possibly hiring someone to help improve my rankings. Is this a mistake? I recently received an email from this company: http://www.seventwentyfour.com/services.html And I was looking at their Rank10 program. I have to admit its more than I wanted to spend, but if they do what they say it might be worth it. Do you think its a scam? Are their better places to look for this type of service? Thanks in advance.
All the pieces, it looks a little steep. And there are few genuine guarantees. It all depends on the value and competitiveness of your selected keywords. Your sites Google PR4 which is fine. But its a little short on links, content and meta tag information. In the mean time click on Free SEO Book in my signature below and get a 17 page intro to SEO.
I'll never trust any company that guarantees "Reach Top 10 Ranking within one month". Plus, they do not specify if this will be for a 1 keyword term or for a "5 keyword term we determined is the best for you but nobody searchs for". Also: what does "Payment to major search engines for preferential scanning" mean? Maybe this is could mean something at Yahoo, but no way to go on paying Google. And to finish: $1999* plus $199* per month per URL. With this amount, you could either hire someone form this forums which sure will be, at least, more clear on the objetives he would be reaching. Or just go and get Adwords + Overture. My conclusion: something sounds fishy when someone guarantees Top 10 rankings.
Guaranteed top 10 rankings??? How can they do that nd every month, lets say you go with them and spend the money (which I think is a little on the high side) and 15 others do the same thing (think of how many millions of webmasters there are), how can they guarantee the same to all 15? They cannot, and therfore they will get your initial payment and hey if they give you a couple of months free then so what, they got your initial payment!
You should really read this page: http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html Especially this part: "Be wary of SEO firms that send you email out of the blue. Amazingly, we get these spam emails too: "Dear google.com, I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..." Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or through the Google Sitemaps (Beta) program, and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever."
I never respond to any of those kinds of email. They could be doing something black hat to get a site ranked that fast. They might also not be targeting high competition search terms. I do all my own SEO and I like to offer free advice now and then.