Sick of SEO/SEM sleeze [Archive] - Search Engine Watch Forums

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Ottaviani

08-10-2004, 10:17 AM

Elisabeth

08-10-2004, 11:14 AM

Hi Brian,

Many of us here can appreciate your frustration, at least with being lumped into the same category as those types of "professional SEO" services -

I encourage you to detail what services and/or products you DO want out of an SEM Firm, and what you expect for your investment in our SEO HELP WANTED Section here:

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forumdisplay.php?f=53

Your contact info can easily be found by interested parties within your User Profile, and I suggest that as a better place for your email address.

Incubator

08-10-2004, 11:55 AM

Hi Brian, Elisabeth offers great advice. Many of our current clients had the same problem as you, unwanted emails, pressure calls and people offering a "silver bullet" solution. With organic SEO it does take some time for conversions to be seen, this is an area most people need more info on so they fully understand whats going on. dont fall for the submit your site to 100,000 search engines for 49.95, that will do more harm then good. if these individuals are calling you out of the blue for your business, that is a really intrusive, and very unprofessional thus really unneccessary and doing alot of harm to the respectful SEM/SEO companies out there

cheers

Wc

NFFC

08-10-2004, 01:34 PM

Hi Brian,

Just a question, not a pitch, what was your target budget for the next 12 months?

Daria_Goetsch

08-10-2004, 03:18 PM

Hi Brian,

From what you said in your post you need someone to work directly with your staff instead of using a pre-formed SEO package for your needs. I'd suggest posting your requirements as mentioned in our jobs forum, there are also job forums at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Forums. You may also want to look into larger SEO/SEM companies with enough staff that they can give you the type of individualized attention you need. A few other places to look would be the Marketing Sherpa SEM guide as well as SEO Consultants. The more detail you can gain from company websites and organizations, the better idea you will have of what they have to offer you. I'm sure there are other suggestions members can post here as well.

I'm sure you've already talked to many companies, here are some guidelines that may be useful. When talking with a company, ask about what they will produce for you and how it is done. If the subject of doorway pages is not brought up, ask them directly if there are any doorway pages produced for your project. Ask them if they use best practices. You should be allowed to talk to a search engine marketing person on staff, they will understand your questions best. If the staff person is not willing to tell you exactly what they do to produce results for you, look elsewhere. Nothing should be hidden from the client, after all, you are paying for those services. Also, any source code, additional web page content and reports produced should belong to the client, if the pages are controlled by the SEO/SEM company, keep looking.

There are reputable SEO/SEM companies out there, look for a good fit for your needs and a company that will work with your specific requirements.

Hope this helps.

Marcia

08-10-2004, 04:09 PM

Make sure the work is done ON your site itself, on *visible* pages. And if necessary, add relevant content pages within the normal site navigation. AND make sure that legitimate links are gotten, I've seen some real sleazy garbage in that area.

Robert_Charlton

08-10-2004, 06:48 PM

I have been looking for an SEO company now for months. I am pretty much at my wits end. I am sick and tired of high pressure sales guys trying to sell me a package. We are a technology company and we are very good at what we do. We want an SEO firm that will work with our technical abilites not simply sell us a package and build doorway pages and build links.

Brian,

I took a look at the Acolyte site indicated in your post, and it appears that you folks are selling a "search engine technology"....

Acolyte provides search engine position management which helps increase qualified traffic to your website. Unlike services which promise to submit your website to 300 or 3,000 search egines, Acolyte actually consults with you to drive qualified leads through proven search engine technology.

Is your post trying to get help optimizing your site, which is how it seems on the surface... or is it perhaps trying to sell your technology, apparently a PPC management tool, to forum members who might read your message?

Your site, incidentally, needs a lot of on-site work to make it search engine friendly. It needs some realistic phrase targeting, relevant text content, text navigation links, and some optimized pages within the site... not doorways. I can't think of any technology, except perhaps cloaking, that would fix it as it currently stands, which is perhaps why companies were trying to sell you doorway pages and link building. As the site currently appears to be targeted, it will need a lot of inbound links to rank well.

Ottaviani

08-11-2004, 09:29 AM

fathom

08-11-2004, 12:47 PM

Robert:

I am not trying to sell anything to anyone here. Yes we are a technology company which I stated and we do provide some PPC consulting to our clients. That being said, my inquiry was concerning finding an SEO company for two websites that we manage CatholicMatch.com and ConservativeMatch.com.

I find it highly unprofessional that you would make accusations without having all the facts.

-- Brian

Well many tends to be quite vocal and candid - at the same time your opening thread title seem quite blantant as well.

But... not really sure what you want

You want an SEO company to rank two sites - but not a package and no pressure sales, and no spam.

As I understand you have an intangible product (at least one product site) e.g. low fix costs and high return.

Be that the case - I'll work based on commission of web sales... (33%) and the risk is mine.

You call me if you're interested.

seobook

08-11-2004, 02:15 PM

Be that the case - I'll work based on commission of web sales... (33%) and the risk is mine.

I am usually not so trusting as to like such sort of deals. How do you ensure they stay honest on a partnership like that?

littleman

08-11-2004, 03:57 PM

Ottaviani, the smelliest ones wear the most perfume.

fathom

08-11-2004, 04:09 PM

I am usually not so trusting as to like such sort of deals. How do you ensure they stay honest on a partnership like that?

That's it > it's a trusting relationship < or not... and as I see both side can develop mutually or both side can screw each other - I chose the former.

seobook

08-11-2004, 04:17 PM

That's it > it's a trusting relationship < or not... and as I see both side can develop mutually or both side can screw each other - I chose the former.
I guess it is just that a bunch of what I have seen and read makes me generally distrusting toward most people, especially toward business people over the web who are not willing to make down payment type investments into their business and want me to carry 100% of the risk and spend thousands of dollars in time and money investing into their business upfront.

Mikkel deMib Svendsen

08-11-2004, 05:58 PM

PPA deals on organic SEO has become more widespread over the last year. In my experience such deals most often work out very well for both parties - but only if you are able to evaluate the websites potential or have a proven track record.

Most of the companies I meet that want PPA deals do so because they have poor conversions. The ones that have really good conversions, and know it, usually don't want to split the profits. It's cheaper just to pay a CPC or CPM. The ones I like to work with are ones that have great untapped potential and that are ready to work together on improving things over time. To me it's very much a question of the right match.

Another model I see more requests for is "cost+" where a minimal fee is paid + a price per action.

In either case, or if you just pay by the hour, you should be able to find qualified SEOs that can help your team adjust and optimize your websites. We are not all just selling pre-packed junk - a lot of the good people you find in this forum do exactly what you seem to be asking for :)

Ottaviani

08-12-2004, 03:26 PM

I will tell you exactly my frustration. As a web development company we often do work for outside clients. We provide an estimate of the work requested and we do the work on a hourly fee basis. Sometimes we beat our estimate sometimes we are a little over. Along the way we continue to inform the client of how much time has been put into the project. The client can see the work and he also know exactly where he is at in spending. We bill at the end of every month for the hours spent even if the total project is not yet complete. We have never had a problem. The SEO work I want done is not even for our clients but sites that we own, I can;t imagine turning a client over to one of these guys. I apologize for sounding like I am whining like this but I know that SEO is important but I am frustrated at the tremendous amout of time I have wasted because of the sleazy tactics which seem to be employed my many of the more prominantly advertised firms.

Here is a typcial exchange between me and a SEO comapnt I contact. BTW Traffic Power contacted us about 6 weeks ago and tried to hard sell one of my partners luckily I intervened but I was completely blown away by their strong arm tactics.

1. Fill out form and get back free web report. *Flags are already going up*

2. Canned email is recieved with some personalization and my "free report" is attatched tell me information I already knew.

3. The email offers me packages and a discussion with the salesman.

4. the problem is when you look at the packages you don't have a clue as tow what they are going to do. *unless of course I am just an idiot, which is possible*

5. Then I get pushy follow up emails or calls from the above salesmen who ultimatly turn rude or even insulting when I become resistant to their overtures.

This is pretty much the basic scenario with minor alterations depending on the company. This goes for most of the companies that advertise on this website.

NFFC

08-12-2004, 03:32 PM

Hi Brian,

Just a question, not a pitch, what was your target budget for the next 12 months?

fathom

08-12-2004, 04:36 PM

Hi Brian,

Just a question, not a pitch, what was your target budget for the next 12 months?

Along the same line "what is your expected return"? I ask this often -- the response is often "I don't really know".

Unfortuately, web design and SEO are a world apart. A web developer can work 40 hours on a project, the client can pay for that 40 hours and see something tangible at the end.

An SEO can do 40 hours of work, the client can pay for 40 hours and the output is... well you tell me?

A web developer has control over the technology, a web developer only needs to worry about their own competition and often doesn't concern themselves with market habits and trends.

A SEO knows (or should) that they do not control search engines, we can only observe and react to the changes search engines make to provide the best search archive.

A SEO knows (or should) that they do not control your competition and their attempts to do precisely what you are attempting to do – rank higher, rank more and possibly be the dominate player online in your industry. SEOs can only react to changes in your competitors’ strategies.

A SEO knows (or should) that they do not control the markets you are attempting to reach, their searching habits, or their precise needs. SEO can only observe these changes and recommend changes to your strategy to match that of your markets.

A bit of a paradox!

Admittedly, there are no guarantees to precise terms (keywords), rankings on such terms, visitation on such terms, or sales conversions on such terms. By acknowledging this – you as the potential client may still want a guarantee as you being a web developer guarantees that you will finish the client's project.

As NFFC points out "for the right budget" I can do almost anything.

Ottaviani

08-12-2004, 04:51 PM

I understand what you are saying, however if an SEO is workling with a technolgy company then the company would see what the SEO is doing. Esepcially id the majority is consulting on what is wrong or what can be better about the site.

I also recgonize that with SEO some keywords are more competitive than others and thus take more time and energy to rank higher.

Primarily what we want from and SEO is information. We want to know what we are doing well and what we can do better. We want to use our abilities in writing software to captialize on the content on our site so that each article/post/profile etc. is ranked as high as possible on the relevent keywords.

To answer the question we will likely spend 15-25k over the next 12 months on SEO if we can actually find a situation we feel good about.

Thanks for all your input.

-- Brian

NFFC

08-12-2004, 05:05 PM

>we will likely spend 15-25k over the next 12 months

You wouldn't even get a small lineage ad in my cities local paper five nights a week for that budget.

I'd advise rethinking your companies stratagy as opposed to beating up on others. Imho.

Incubator

08-12-2004, 05:19 PM

Robert:

That being said, my inquiry was concerning finding an SEO company for two websites that we manage CatholicMatch.com and ConservativeMatch.com.

-- BrianI have to agree with NFFC, your budget is way off, you may want to look into an internal business procedure to help with your SEO/SEM. For that type of budget range you should be focusing more on the research and implementation with an internal team

cheers

WC

Mikkel deMib Svendsen

08-12-2004, 07:53 PM

I have to agree. I do exactly the kind of consulting you are asking for but hardly ever in the price range you are talking about.

Also, if you are looking for qualified consultants I would not spend so much time filling out forms for free reports that, as you say, only tell you things you already know. Thats simply not a very good way to select a good provider, in my oppinion. Instead, do some reasearch, find out who does work you like and contact those firms, or people directly.

Ottaviani

08-13-2004, 10:35 AM

You entiled to you opinion and I am not looking to buy newspaper ads. However even if our budget is low everything I have already stated is true. Maybe if we ever where able to begin working with a professional SEO we might have a more realistic understanding of what it takes. But you certainly can determine that by the pricing which is posted on many of the SEO companies website especially many that advertise on SEW.

Elisabeth

08-13-2004, 12:41 PM

But you certainly can determine that by the pricing which is posted on many of the SEO companies website especially many that advertise on SEW.

I think this is a good point to address - generally speaking, the type of "SEO companies" you are complaining about are the only ones who post their pricing/packages on their sites - you'll find that many consultants & firms at the next level (and plenty of members here) don't give out their pricing in that manner - they evaluate a project based on their initial review of what needs doing, and what the expected results are.

That's not to say that there aren't decent companies that do in fact estimate their pricing on their sites. Just harder to identify the difference, that's all.