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July 31, 2014 at 6:59 am #988847Up::0
Dear all, I thought I’d mention a case involving a friend who recently got onto an SEO company here in Melbourne Australia.
He paid about $1K a month for front page on google (top positions) in search.
He ranked top for about 5 weeks for his term (with a newly acquired domain) and then crashed, apparently being penalized in some way (some pages back) and not apparently able to recover.
There was some sort of contract involved and they are now suing each other.
I merely post this case as a warning to others.
I suppose you could say there are snakes in all areas.
All the bestAugust 1, 2014 at 2:05 am #1169220Up::0Unfortunately this sort of thing happens and it is terrible for everyone involved not to mention the bad name it gives the genuine people in the SEO industry.
As with a lot of businesses you should aim for a referral from another happy customer.
August 1, 2014 at 7:11 am #1169221Up::0It’s common knowledge Snakeman, that new domains can rank highly temporarily for certain search terms, and then all of a sudden disappear. This is not necessarily a penalty by all means, only that the search engines have detected it’s a new website and relocated it where it should be.
August 4, 2014 at 11:41 am #1169222Up::0SEO is not an overnight or monthly fix. Most campaigns take at least three months to gain any significant traction so anybody offering services faster than this should be seriously questioned. It’s not to say they’re all bad but as a business owner you need to have a clear understanding of exactly what is occurring with one of your most critical assets.
Too many businesses just hand over the keys to their website, filled with false hopes and dreams, and then leave it all up to the SEO agency. Contact your SEO agency, speak with them on a monthly basis at least, and be clear on exactly what work is taking place with your website.
August 10, 2014 at 4:08 pm #1169223August 12, 2014 at 12:43 am #1169224Up::0Well what do these businesses expect – they go into these contracts with no knowlledge of the area, expecting to be able to rank over night if they throw money at it. SEO is always changing, and a lot of it is against the terms of service for Google/Bing etc. Most of the SEO companies outsource their work to obtain the arbitrage to sweat shops in Pakistan who then set about spamming links, creating web 2.0 blog tiers with crappy articles and too much anchor text – it is jst par for the course.
August 12, 2014 at 10:32 am #1169225Up::0If you want to get on Google overnight, get on Google Adwords.
If you want to get organic traffic, you have got to get intelligence on what your competitors are doing. I recommend investing in BrightEdge or something similar.PM me if you would like more info.
August 14, 2014 at 3:54 am #1169226Up::0Completely agree with what has already been stated. In order to rank well within Google, you need to wait at least a good three months and blog consistently.
August 14, 2014 at 9:55 am #1169227Up::0Hi Snakeman,
I get half a dozen spam emails a day from people offering me SEO services.They are all garbage but…
The vast majority of business owners don’t know this.
IMHO, we owe it to them to keep this topic top of the threads in the FS SEO forum.
Keep posting warnings like this Snakeman, I’ll keep adding my 5 cents worth. Which is in this case…..
SEO is not about chasing top ranking of a specific search phrase.
The reasons are simple:
- The most used search phrase is largely irrelevant.
- Chasing the “most used” keyword is cost-ineffective
- Perhaps 70% of searchers don’t use the top 10 keywords.
- Search results for the top 10 keywords are very unstable.
I could go on…
Keep the warnings coming! Don’t be put off!
Regs,
JohnWAugust 14, 2014 at 9:59 am #1169228Up::0John Romaine, post: 196976 wrote:I really don’t see the point of these threads.
Hi JohnR,
I do – big time.See comments above.
Regs,
JohnWAugust 15, 2014 at 4:39 am #1169229Up::0JohnW, post: 197358 wrote:Hi JohnR,
I do – big time.See comments above.
Regs,
JohnWI don’t.
There are plenty of scumbags in any industry.
It would be much more beneficial for everyone here to share positive outcomes…
eg, “We worked with XYZ SEO agency, and we’re very happy”
August 15, 2014 at 5:32 am #1169230Up::0John Romaine, post: 197420 wrote:I don’t.There are plenty of scumbags in any industry.
It would be much more beneficial for everyone here to share positive outcomes…
eg, “We worked with XYZ SEO agency, and we’re very happy”
Hi JohnR,
We both want to expose industry scumbags.We need positive examples also but recommendation-type posts are compromised because we do not know the knowledge level or performance criteria of the recommenders.
I’m sure we have both seen numerous examples of, “I recommend XYZ SEO agency” on FS and when we checked out XYZ’s website we’ve gone away shaking our heads about the garbage we’ve read on it. For all we know the post may have been planted by an XYZ stooge.
IMHO, horror stories are potentially far more valuable because:
- They are real life, or purport to be
- They often provide examples of dollars at risk or lost – a performance measure
- They enable the real SEOs around here to educate business owners
Educating business owners about SEO is the best way to weed out the industry scumbags. I believe the horror story example provides the added impetus of a motive to read about the topic in more detail.
I say as loudly as possible to FSs, keep these examples coming for the benefit of other small business owners.
Best regs,
JohnWAugust 15, 2014 at 7:59 am #1169231Up::0I’ve said it before, the world is full of good and questionable service providers be it online or offline.
The buck unfortunately stops with the business.
The time needs to be invested in speaking with numerous vendors before making a decision and the contract needs to cover both sides.
If its sounds too cheap or too good to be true it likely is.
Whats too cheap? if you speak with 5+ providers of varied sizes, you should have a good insight.
This is no different to doing any other kind of deal.In addition if you’re paying a respectable amount of $ to a web designer, seo or marketer you should be measuring their efforts independently.
We pay for home and car insurance for peace of mind. I don’t see why web should be any different, especially with globalisation.The criticone audit to date has helped a large amount of businesses identify issues and rectify them before it hit the fan.
Ask yourself what are you doing to leverage and protect your online investment?
August 15, 2014 at 8:47 am #1169232Up::0pauls, post: 197445 wrote:I’ve said it before, the world is full of good and questionable service providers be it online or offline.The buck unfortunately stops with the business.
Hi Paul,
Every decision we make is based on:- Knowledge
- Experience
- Logic
- Emotion
In the communication limitations of a forum, I feel we can best help with “knowledge”.
The issues you raise of research and measurement are crucial and are part of the “knowledge” component. They are also so complex that they are separate threads worthy of discussion in their own right.
Cheers,
JohnWAugust 15, 2014 at 10:37 am #1169233Up::0An easy solution for any SEO business who guarantee’s or suggest that they can give you a page 1 ranking, is you set the terms and conditions (yes reverse it), and you only pay on results. That will quickly weed out the people who say more than they deliver.
Make it graduated.
1 week page 1, 10% of agred price
50 weeks – 100% of agreed price.I know this is a dubious approach and no business would take it up, but in reality if they can really deliver they would accept.
I get at least 3 or 4 calls a week from people offering to fix my website (it needs it), before I even discuss SEO I ask them if they want to buy some goats, that gets them off the line really quickly.
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