SEO Agencies - do they all do the same thing? i.e. not much?

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Hi All

I have a small business that has been operating for almost 3 years now. It is based in Australia.

Since then I have used 3 different SEO agencies.

Whilst each agency operated slightly differently and had somewhat different strategies, I never really felt that they implemented what I feel like they should be implementing or what basically every advice site says they should be doing.

I simply feel like they sign you up, they release some back links every month and tell you that your rankings are improving as a result of the backlinks.

The back links are NEVER relevant to the sites.

They are often on websites that have low traffic, are not local, or look kind of 'made up' for the pusrposes of back links.

When i look at my analyitcs, it is not like people are going through these backlink sites to access my sites.

Everyone says that this strategy is wrong, but every agency seems to be just doing that?

All agencies say that they will be targetting RELEVANT pages for RELEVANT backlinks in local markets that are specific to my industry.

This does not happen.

But what is even more frustrating is, when i look at my competitors and those that are ranking number one on google in my industry, they do not appear to have the RELEVANT backlinks that these agencies keep talking about.

So whats the go?

Am I missing something? Can someone please shed some light.
#search engine optimization #agencies #seo #thing
  • It depends on how much you paid for them? Few hundred for them would not get you anything.

    Might as well save up and do some guest posting. Use the money for content creation.

    [self-promotional comment removed by moderator]
  • As I read your question there is some misconception on the backlinks topic. See if you are hiring an SEO Agency for your business then there are many things you have to take care like first analyze what is your requirement? Because the things you mentioned above are different. First, you are talking that you want traffic from that backlink, Right? So it is a different task. Getting traffic from backlinks is a different process. And the SEO agency you hired doing a different thing. They are trying to rank your website on Google for that purpose they are making backlinks. It is for building the reputation of your domain technically which is called "Domain Authority". And when your website starts ranking on Google then you'll get the traffic automatically. So it is better to justify things before taking any action.

    Now let's talk about the thing that you actually want. If you want traffic to your website via links then you have to tell the requirements to the SEO agency clearly and if you want both then tell them about your requirement. I am sure there is some misunderstanding occurs between you and your SEO agency.
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  • This is not your fault. It is the fault of these agencies. They did not serve as they committed on So next time you will be careful and not try them again. All the agencies are not same, some are very hardworking and they work according to their commitment.
  • They all talk about relevant because they think that is what they have to say not because they know it works.

    First, define relevant.

    If you are about mortgages, you might say a link from a page talking about roof repair on a site for a window replacement company, is it relevant?

    The subject matter is different but a good number of people looking at roof repair are looking at remodeling projects that are big enough to require a mortgage.

    Relevant is really useful to get people who are likely to buy from you to visit your pages. But if the page they are visiting from has no power to pass along, it passes no power to your pages, so not good fir SEO.

    On the other hand, a link from, say Bank of America or the City of New York, would do nothing for you in Australia from the point of view of visitors, But 1 link from one of them would give you quite an SEO boost.

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  • Seems to me - from my experience - that the best SEO is:

    - creating helpful content (your effort, or outsource to skilled writers)
    - befriending other bloggers (genuine blog commenting, promoting bloggers on your blog and through social; an be outsourced but the agency needs be genuine and pay strict attention to detail)

    Then, backlinks build organically, through your generosity, and the rank slowly builds.

    Many agencies skip the above 2 steps, so you never rank.
  • je be clear on what you want, i know it's not fun but you can't outsource seo without knowing some of it so you can ask something like "i want links from a PBN that talk about the same niche i'm in"
  • In SEO, you generally get what you pay for, assuming you know what you are paying for.

    If your agency partners were basically in the lower tier of cost (less than $1000/month) they were trying to maximize profit by automating as much of the service they provided to you as possible. At that price, SEO is rarely profitable if they are spending more than 5-10 manhours per month on your project.

    If you want a personalized strategy which would give you real growth and results, you do need to be willing to pay for it. Find an agency or consultant who is willing to audit your site up front (and you be willing to pay for that service-a good audit should require some effort) and give you actionable steps with approximate impact/outcomes for each phase of the strategy. These estimates should NOT be considered guarantees (run from anyone who guarantees you anything in SEO) but should give directional insight you can use to evaluate how valuable SEO will/would be to your organization.

    Be willing to pay a reasonable amount (reasonable is always contingent on impact to your business-if this will make you $100,000 in sales, $10,000 in expense is a very reasonable amount as in marketing terms, a 9:1 Return on ad spend is phenomenal) for a personalized strategy to grow your business.
  • I understand your problem. But I would suggest that you talk through your issues with your seo agency. If they really care about customer satisfaction then they will try to analyse where they went wrong in fulfilling your needs. If you still feel dissatisfied by their services, then it is time to look into a different agency and this tome you should layout your needs for your website very clearly. Thank you.
  • It's best to completely ignore S.E.O..
    EVEN if you crack it...Google can and will change the game. You have no long term control.
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    • What if you make a good chunk of your money from you SEO efforts?

      What if Google has not changed the game, only how good it's got at enforcing the rules?

  • I dont know about what kind of SEO agencies you hired for your projects. But most of agencies are still doing on the same old school SEO methods. Most of SEO agencies still doing old tactics which is still working but it is not essential to getting on top search positions via such kind of stuff. All SEO agencies can't relay on the old methods they must need to be learn new tactics which those agencies weren't did for you. Basic link building is OK but there are so many other link building stuff which you have to do for your client website if you're want to get your website on the top search rankings.
    Also SEO agencies, have different kind of SEO plans for monthly work. I don't know which one they offered you and you paid for it. Remember, if you pay less and expecting big results then you're wrong. This scenario is also a big point for you.
  • I think the mistake was made at the point of contracting the agency. If you told them that you wanted traffic on your website, then that is what they are doing. You should have specified the kind of traffic you want.
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    • Why would you assume they did not specify?

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  • Every agency are followes almost same staratagy , there are no level of research work.
    They are handling multiple project in single time,with minimum employee.
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    • Utter rubbish - You have ZERO evidence to support any of this rubbish.

      We offer bespoke services and solutions to our different clients. This is why we have had clients with us for 10 years. Not because they like us, but because we deliver!
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  • I would suggest that you earn your back links instead of hiring an agency .Buying low quality back links will get your site penalized .You need to do your own seo You can read blog post view YouTube tutorials and learn instead of wasting your hard earned money.
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    • How about buy high quality backlinks?

      It is a lot better if you learn how and to who to delegate, then delegate.

      Really.

      [QQUOTE=Jamell;11539889]I would suggest that you earn your back links instead of hiring an agency .Buying low quality back links will get your site penalized .You need to do your own seo You can read blog post view YouTube tutorials and learn instead of wasting your hard earned money.[/QUOTE]
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  • Buy Quality backlinks from high domain authority sites. That will improve your rankings as well as traffic to your sites.
  • Just curious here, but has any of the agencies you worked with done any on-page SEO work at all? Backlinks are definitely important and to be honest, I don't see site-wide relevancy as being too much of a deal really as long as the linking pages are mostly relevant. But it seems like you are also concerned with link quality, and that's definitely something to address.

    Hopefully, someone has done the work to look at your keywords/competitors and put together a solid on-page strategy though. Building links without a certain level of on-page is just a waste of time really. I'd be happy to take a look if you want to send over your URL too.

    Also - how long did you let each agency work? Being on the other side of this more often than I would like, I've seen a few clients give up on SEO work after 3-4 months and either drop it entirely or switch agencies. No one has a strategy that's going to work magic in a short amount of time unless you have deep pockets and $1k/month is probably a 6+ month investment to see break-even ROIs in a competitive industry. So, I would suggest having a real conversation about key performance indicators early on and focus on conversions instead of vanity metrics like ranking or traffic.

    If calls to the business are your primary lead source, setup CallRail and there's no question on whether your SEO works or not at that point. Just know that it's going to take more than a few weeks with SEO and maybe talk to your agency about running Google Ads + retargeting in the meantime.

    We do a lot of that and even with a modest ad budget the ROI from ads typically keeps clients happy long enough for the SEO to kick in. We also have accounts that broke even in month 4-6 and actually stuck with it for over a year and they can hardly handle the business, so don't give up on SEO entirely if you've already sunk a decent investment into your site.

    Consider it a long-term play for the business and know that you're really not just doing 'SEO' if you're doing it right, but instead building a brand that will get better with time and investment.
  • I am an owner of a SEO Agency. Well, I am not that good in English but I have employees which studied in English. We have worked with a local UK business recently. Our works are generally global but we started to do local SEO a few months ago...

    Well... The website I got was seriously a kind of spam. All articles were scraped. All content was filled with keywords in every single sentence. So it wasn't even ranked in search result. The keyword has high competition already. Even in the local... In global websites, you can find cheaper ways for link building at times. However local seo is totally different. You need to spend for it. As same as many others told in the subject, it shouldn't cost you less than 1000-1500$ monthly to you. Because a single link building costs about 80-150$. You will need links from .au domains. They will be boost for you but they will be also expensive. Besides your SEO company should be knowledgeable (or they should learn it well) about your business. They should ask you questions. Then they should create good and high quality content for your website which is related with on-page seo. They should speed up your website and make research about how to improve UX.

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