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September 15, 2014 at 4:57 am #989371Up::0
SEO Horror story – continued.
Dear all, I should relate to you here a horror story of SEO. I did refer to it in an earlier post and here is the latest.
SEO, better known as Search Engine Optimisation, as usually practiced is in my view largely a scam, whereby people game the system to get their websites at the top of google search above those who would ordinarily have pride of place.
In the old “bricks and mortar’ world, those that were best enjoyed the best reputations and so got business.
Now with society dumbed down, people google everything and whoever gets on top in search gets the business. As an old fart, I thought that people respected trademarks and other IP and didn’t try to use a trademark to steal work via SEO.
I’ve posted many times here how infringers use our IP to steal our clients and this is a non-stop problem in our business, which we are slowly getting on top of.
However here I deal with a recent case involving a good friend in an unconnected business who decided to take the plunge with SEO to generate clients for his business.
The business is one that now generates most new work via google search. As a result Google makes a killing on adverts for the business and SEO companies clean up as they try to get given businesses at the top of the pile.
OK, I’ll give the game away here. The business is pest control! Do a search and count the ads.
This gives you an idea as how competitive the business is and where pest controllers get their work from.
Anyway my friend decided to get an SEO firm involved to get himself on top on search rankings and get his phone ringing.
He did what everyone does these days and did a google search for either SEO or SEO Melbourne.
Among the collection of results he obviously clicked on the first, second or third advert at the time (not an organic link) and after seeing the excellent and very slick website and all it had to offer, he fell for the sales pitch. A guarantee of page one or no payment required.
The first month was OK. A dozen odd new backlinks from newly created blogs and the like and he was rating well in the relevant search terms.
It went downhill from there and within a few short months his domain was de-indexed from google for breaching their alleged guidelines.
He decided not to pay the SEO firm and in turn they sued him.
He’d signed up at $1K a month with a minimum term of 12 months.
He want to court in the last fortnight and the SEO firm’s lawyer held up the contract my friend had signed and ordered my friend to pay their money owed and their legal costs or a total of about $15K.
Yes the magistrate granted their wish and my friend must pay up within 8 weeks.
It turns out the SEO firm is a gung ho operator with offices in all Australian cites and deal with this sort of thing all the time.
They were suing others as well!
They may in fact make more money suing dissatisfied customers for money than from any SEO work they do.
Now of course, I only have my friend’s side of the story. I cannot speak for the SEO firm. While the court outcome is not disputable, they may well dispute the rest.
It also is worth mentioning that my friend’s mistake was signing an obviously one-sided contract.
But is this sort of (alleged) story common?
All the bestSeptember 15, 2014 at 8:07 am #1171810September 15, 2014 at 10:37 am #1171811Up::0I don’t get what your point is with this story.
Are there dodgy SEO agencies that do more damage than good? Absolutely.
Did your friend fail to do any research on the quality of their SEO agency? Absolutely!
If they had researched correctly they’d realise the following:
a) Reputable SEO agencies don’t offer guarantees
b) Reputable SEO agencies don’t do lock in contracts
c) Reputable SEO agencies talk about conversions not rankingsIt’s like hearing about someone that has bought the latest fat blaster, “we guarantee you’ll lose 50kg in 30 days by using our blaster10000”. If you get sucked into the sales pitch and don’t realise that you actually have to use it, i.e. run your ass off, then chances are you’re not going to see any results.
The problem is that businesses want to improve sales, that’s why they’re investing in online marketing or SEO, but what happens is they shift focus on rankings, keywords and traffic which mean nothing if the keyword isn’t one that generates business or the website fails to capture the traffic.
It’s the ranking that gets business in trouble because they want results too quickly. Do I feel sorry for the ones that get burnt the way your friend did? Yes, of course but do your research and get referrals.
September 15, 2014 at 1:01 pm #1171812Up::0A few years ago I paid $5,000 for a snake handling course and was bitten. Even though they told me that the snake was harmless, I got quite sick and had to take 6 months off work.
In the end, they took me to court because I refused to pay them, so they sued me and now, I’m out of pocket $7,500, lost my job and have a terrible fear of snakes, let alone dealing with snake handlers.
Let’s face it, they’re all shonks.
September 15, 2014 at 9:40 pm #1171813Up::0It’s normally the ones, that don’t do their homework before signing on the “Dotted-Line” that get scammed. That includes any industry, not just SEO.
In SEO, any company that makes guarantees to get you to sign-up, should always “Ring Alarm Bells”.
September 16, 2014 at 12:17 pm #1171814Up::0The moral of the story, Google rankings don’t equate to credibility or performance.
Why does everyone chase number one, or believe number one is the best.
Number one just means I have paid more money than number 2, and number 2 more than 3. There is one born everyday.
You must do your own due dilligence.
Your friend is as much to blame as the SEO company.
September 16, 2014 at 12:29 pm #1171815Up::0I feel very sorry for your friend. He must be so disillusioned and stressed out and be feeling like a fool to boot.
This is a great story to share however so that others do not fall for the same scams.
I hope he can recover emotionally and financially and crush his market.
September 16, 2014 at 12:44 pm #1171816Up::0MD Clean, post: 199633 wrote:I feel very sorry for your friend. He must be so disillusioned and stressed out and be feeling like a fool to boot.This is a great story to share however so that others do not fall for the same scams.
I hope he can recover emotionally and financially and crush his market.
Why do you say this is a scam, without knowing the full story you cant make that statement.
Courts are not stupid, if they thought it was a scam, would they have ruled this way.
September 17, 2014 at 2:37 am #1171817Up::0bb1, post: 199634 wrote:Why do you say this is a scam, without knowing the full story you cant make that statement.Courts are not stupid, if they thought it was a scam, would they have ruled this way.
He has had to pay $15K and $1K per month up until he stopped paying for SEO on his site that Google de-indexed. Google does this to sites that have had “black hat” techniques applied to SEO.
Courts ruled on the validity of the contract, not on the effectiveness of the services provided.
I have done my own SEO and in six months, I have reached page 2 and 3 for keywords such as Commercial Cleaning Gold Coast and Office Cleaning Gold Coast – super competitive keywords much the same as the OP’s friend. I am on the First Page for those Key Words in my suburb – among the biggest CBD’s on the GC. I fully expect to continue to climb the Google Rankings as time goes by.
And there is ZERO chance that my site will be de-indexed by Google.
At the same time, I have an Adwords account where I appear in the top 3 results for 100+ keywords and this costs me $80.00 per week.
My heart really goes out to the OP’s friend because he put his faith in a company that didn’t deliver what he wanted, destroyed his domain name (and probably his business name) and cost him a fortune.
If he was not scammed then I do not know what the word means.
September 17, 2014 at 3:48 am #1171818Up::0MD Clean, post: 199662 wrote:He has had to pay $15K and $1K per month up until he stopped paying for SEO on his site that Google de-indexed. Google does this to sites that have had “black hat” techniques applied to SEO.Courts ruled on the validity of the contract, not on the effectiveness of the services provided.
If he was not scammed then I do not know what the word means.
scam (skæm)
n., v. scammed, scam•ming. n.
1. a fraudulent scheme; swindle.
v.t.
2. to cheat; defraud.Thats the dictionary view of a scam, now if the company was really involved in fraud, the OPS friend could have showed to the judge that the company did not deliver as required, was ripping him off, etc, etc. Obvioulsy the friend was unable to prove any of this and such the judge ruled for the SEO company.
This may be wrong but on the information provided, we cannot assume it is a scam, otherwise the friend could have shown that the SEO company did not meet the contract requirements.
I just looked up scam watch, cant find any SEO companies listed.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a poor opinion on certain SEO business’s and claims but we cant come on here and claim they are scams without all of the facts, and based on the facts as presented in the original post, there is nothing to say it is a scam. For all we know it is something that the friend did to cause the delisting, there are more things than “black hat” techiniques that can get you delisted.
Happy you are doing your own SEO, just as an aside, my website ranks on page one for certain search terms, never had any SEO applied, and was last updated about 3 years ago, oh and I dont have a blog..
September 17, 2014 at 7:45 am #1171819Up::0MD Clean, post: 199662 wrote:My heart really goes out to the OP’s friend because he put his faith in a company that didn’t deliver what he wanted, destroyed his domain name (and probably his business name) and cost him a fortune.If he was not scammed then I do not know what the word means.We have no idea what the actual story, just a post by a long time SEO business hater.
September 17, 2014 at 9:00 am #1171820September 17, 2014 at 9:14 am #1171821Up::0MD Clean, post: 199662 wrote:And there is ZERO chance that my site will be de-indexed by Google.lol, that’s funny
September 17, 2014 at 1:49 pm #1171822Up::0MD Clean, post: 199633 wrote:I feel very sorry for your friend. He must be so disillusioned and stressed out and be feeling like a fool to boot.This is a great story to share however so that others do not fall for the same scams.
I hope he can recover emotionally and financially and crush his market.
We are on the same page about this story.
September 20, 2014 at 4:14 am #1171823Up::0John Romaine, post: 199708 wrote:lol, that’s funnyFair enough.
What I ought to have said is that my site has been underpinned by best practices advocated by MOZ and Google etc.
I accept that Google can and do, do what ever they please.
… and, the other side of the same coin is that SERPs are a zero sum game (ultimately) so for every site that loses Google juice, somebody moves up the rankings – if my site continues to be built on best practices, I maximise my chances of being rewarded by Google.
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