What is your biggest complaint about working with SEO companies?

I put this in General Marketing because I would think many business owners think of SEO as marketing; or not necessarily know to go in the SEO thread.

I'm pulling together an article that shares how businesses think of SEO companies.

For example, I had a guy say to me he didn't know if anything was being done. He got a report but he didn't understand what was actually being done.

If you work with an SEO company, what are some things you don't like about them? Or why did you switch to the one you have now?

Look forward to hearing from you.
Cheers!
Barb

 

Most (if not all) SEO experts who promise to put your site on the first page of Google don't have theirs there.

That's my complaint....

 

I hear ya on that one. I would argue though that it takes time for SEO. So perhaps someone is able to work on and get their clients ranked before they can rank their own. And uff, no promises!

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Good point. Thanks for this.

 

My biggest complain to seo companies is why are they always promising that they can take my website in 1st page of Google.

 

My problem with SEO companies is that they are trying to get businesses to play a fool's game. Darth Google has tens of thousands of engineers whose job it is to make organic results unpredictable so that no business can count on organic traffic for reliable traffic/revenues over time. That is because Darth Google wants to sell all of these businesses their AdWords advertising as the only way to get stable, consistent results.

While they say that they are trying to prevent spammers from manipulating organic results and that is why they have to change their algorithms frequently and not let anyone know what the changes are, that is just crap. They want the only consistent results to come from paid advertising with them and they are very good at ensuring this. So, any company offering SEO results is just hoping that they can get recurring revenues from victim companies that do not know any better.

 

I agree with @qwikad.com
One must ask a SEO company the terms for which their own SEO website is ranking and check before hiring.

@Barb Davids
You said,
I hear ya on that one. I would argue though that it takes time for SEO. So perhaps someone is able to work on and get their clients ranked before they can rank their own. And uff, no promises!

How is this possible my friend?
For years they cannot get their own website ranked for a couple of handful terms, how will they get results for me in around 6 months?

 

New company is one possibility. So not years. And SEO itself is a tough industry to rank in. And when the person is working on their clients' sites and not their own, it adds to that.

 

@Barb Davids
I understand that SEO is a tough, very tough term to rank for, not talking about ranking for that.
The SEO company must be able to show some proof of previous ranks they got, for some website they worked on earlier.
And they should be able to provide reference of that website owner.

Even if this third website was their own, they must have their current contact info published on that website, so one would know.

Without providing something like this, its just like a scam...
It would be like someone woke up one day, dropped a WP website on a domain, selling SEO services of course, not willing to provide any proof of previous work...
Who would pay such a so called SEO company?

 

@JEET brings up some good points and the key thing that makes it even more futile is that Darth Google is battling hard against all of the SEO consultants' strategies and, quite frankly, the dark forces are winning. Of course, for me, this is a war in which I wish both sides could lose.

 

@jrbiz
I think sir that your wish is coming true. Have you seen recent results of google?
In trying to fight spam fed by SEO, google decided to rank hand picked websites higher. As a result of this, ancient websites which used to have a name have started coming back up again.

This is ok, but google forgot that webmasters made better websites than those, "provided better information" than those ancient websites, and "algo of google" was ranking these websites higher for a reason, and people were liking results of google for a reason.
Now when google has "fallen" back to those ancient websites, its their own searcher who is stuck with crap again...

I can bet anything that people are now searching for the same webpages by adding domain names to their search terms, because "now" they are not finding what they used to like in google's top results anymore...

I wrote this based on personal experiences.

 

Pluses and minuses with Google.

Minus, I can't seem find anything any more, but leaves me with higher margins when I can find stuff. Eliminates a lot of my competition. Much like before the internet. Very few cutthroat competitors selling at or below cost.

Plus, neither can anyone else. Since they can't and my 40 years of contacts can, others are forced to pay the going rate or not restore their vehicles.

 

I just saw an article indicating that Darth Google, on Wednesday, made "significant changes" to its algorithms. The BS continues.

 

Didn't they just completed one update last month?

 

Exacky what i was thinking!

 

the biggest complain is a promise to take sites to 1st positions very soon, and that a big part of these companies are not professionals. Just take your money.

 

Not professionals? Then HOW did they get your money?

 

On the other side, from an SEO person. All keywords are different on getting ranking on google front page. Example: 'Strawberry cheese cake' would be easier on getting ranked on first page of google than doing the same for the word 'SEO'. That could be a reason why an SEO Company does not have their website ranked on front page under SEO.

 

This depends on the keyword, how old the site is, need a page for the keyword to get ranked etc. Not sure who tells you this but on average it takes 3 months to start to see some real movement.

Seen less time, seen more. It depends on the 'keyword' you want to get ranked under organic seo.