Most SEO Companies are Thieves

Yes, its true. I always hear bad things about SEO firms. I think the main problem is that customers want to find a cheap company that can provide good SEO results, but in fact they don't receive any advantages.

BTW, after recent Google algorithms not every SEO company can't deliver good results.

Well said Evgeniy.

I try anymore to push my clients to nothing but using online advertisement such as adwords. Yeah - it's a little pricey - but it works.

These SEO companies are making a bad name for us all - so I started a new package, that allows me to investigate bad SEO companies. I just got to get the word out...

Most people who work at agencies are clueless. I worked in one for a few weeks before quitting. Not a single one of their staff had ranked their own websites before or had their own websites ranking.

They were all doing the same retarded shit like getting manual article links and buying guest posts on shitty ******* sites.

The fact is, you have to know what your doing by taking risks with your own money in order to get good at SEO. Only then can you figure out what kind of links show a good ROI.

Most people who work for SEO companies are ******* clueless.

The catch 22 though is. Most seo agencies cost an arm and a leg. And most people who are really awesome at SEO are either ranking their own stuff or cost even more than that.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

This is a serious situation for those like me that are not frauds and do care about getting relevent traffic to their client's websites. I'm turning more and more to PPC. I know that Google wants you to do that, but I don't think I have any other choice.

Also, clients are never that patient to see the rankings. Before Penguin, I would tell clients that it would take six months to see solid results. They said they understood. However, after six weeks, the clients are whining about the results.

This is a tough business to be in. However, business after business that has come to me - about all of them told me their horror stories about their former SEO companies that ruined their site.

One example was I went to a place of business to give them my presentation. They told me that they were still in contract with their SEO company for a year. At the ten month mark, they had no gain in traffic, no real conversions, no nothing. I investigated and saw that their SEO company got them ranked on the first page for a few KW phrases, but saw that these were terms that nobody ever looked up. There was no competition within these niches - hence they ranked very easily. But again, nobody was searching these terms! Total fraud!!!

Anyway, great to hear you guys talk about these black hat seo firms. Please keep the ball rolling and post what you've been hearing out there.

You have to remember that people that are receiving good experience are not going to call you, so you are only hearing from people with bad experiences. I still believe your statement is correct, but you can't draw your conclusion from just the people contacting you looking for a new SEO company.

Great topic and discussion guys, keep it up!

Yes, maybe "most" are thieves or idiots.

But the real idiots are the people who don't do research before using a company.
I go to topseos.com and thats where we found resultfirst.com. They are an excellent SEO company. We called up every person who left a testimony on their site, and didn't hear 1 complaint. Most of their clients had good things to say which is why we used them.

We're only using them for 2 sites, but they do 100% manual SEO. You put down a small deposit to get started ($600) then don't pay again untill you're ranking.

For one of our sites they got us on page 1, position 4 within 3 months. I've also checked their backlinks myself, and I like how they work. So there are definitely some good companies out there who are not thieves.

The problem really is the low barrier to entry where anyone can jump online and begin offering an SEO service. People who have limited knowledge can call themselves SEO experts and most buyers do not have the know-how to distinguish a good SEO firm from a pathetic one - this is also something that contributes to the high number of poor agencies out there.

It would be unfair to criticize the seo firms only. Most of clients don't understand (or don't want to understand) that SEO is a process not a project. it takes some to time achieve desired result. People want to get instant result through SEO which is impossible and then they blame the seo companies

Let me be fair, for some people my SEO service works like gold and they swear with me, for some others it doesn't move an inch and in some cases the rankings even turn the wrong way.

In general it works out great for people with real sites that are of fine qualtiy.
In general it doesn't work for people with (crappy) affiliate sites.

However there are clients with affiliate sites where it works out more then awesome, even I am surprised some times.

So yeah there are clients that can shoot me and there are clients that praise me to heaven so I think I'm doing okay as I have no control over the clients site or what they did in the past or how they monetize it. You could say it's my responsibility to take care of the client site and there is some point in that but not for $99/month. I took the low budget/forum sales approach as I know there is a market for that and all I can do is offer a service that is as good/safe as possible.

But yeah, I get approached plenty of times by so-called SEO companies and they request a full quote, including kw research and expectations and what not for the same price. That ain't gonna work and I'm pretty harsh in my replies to such companies to never hear from them again. Probably they like people to sweet mouth them and end up with some Odesk or Freelancer outsourcer who give them some basic tips and offer them the world. And then you get people like you reporting about such companies

Makes a lot of sense.

A couple of months ago a few friends approached me that they wanted to setup an SEO company in Holland and outsource the work to me, we made some deals where we guarantee results. Thus far they brought in about 5-6 clients and we got the results that they asked for. Cause they are total noobs on the whole SEO front I do invest a little more time to make sure that we can accomplish the expectations, simply cause they are friends of mine and want to build a good name.

But the main reason why we get good results every single time is cause these customer sites aren't SEO'ed before and cause it are real companies instead of affiliate/adsense or anything like that and on top of that a budget that fits the keywords.

Heck, in my monthly service I offer people 6 keywords, purely to guarantee the kw anchor diversity. And then they come up with 6 crazy competitive keywords and complain when they don't get the results that they expected/wished for.

Really people, go do a reality check first before you get involved with outsourcing SEO services.

If you think most SEO services are a scam, go buy a car from a licensed car dealer, I guarantee the average buyer will get hosed on the price, especially If you give them another car as a trade in.

Just saying, the world is full of scams. Research before buying.

Yea it sucks, but putting a lot of research into the company before using it good. If you are able to contact people in the social network that have used the product is a good way to go as well.

Yeah I agree,some of the "SEO experts" have very high prices without any coverage.

Most reputable SEO companies will have case studies. I've never hired an SEO company before but if I did, I would probably contact some of these businesses they worked for and ask about them.

Still a struggle for us who do nothing but create link bait and content to earn links...not a lot of companies can afford to do this nor do they want to wait.

It's really hard to find a good SEO company, agree with you! I also have heard some stories that they work great on your website, then when you pay them, everything is OK, after about a month, something "happens" and your website needs MORE work... And you should call the company again and again, again...

Questions to ask an SEO you're going to hire:

1. What competitive search terms have you worked on ?
2. What is the CPC in Google adwords
3. Can you do technical SEO?
4. How much $ will you take for profit?
5. What do you think of paid links?
6. What type of links will you build?
and more...

You do kinda need to interview them but if you don't know the right questions to ask then you're kinda screwed anyway.

Getting better ranking of a site in Google is very tough now and takes a lot of time and effort. Most of the site owners does not want to wait that long and thinks that they have been scammed.

**But yet, there are some SEO companies who are really fraud**

Some people are really not working correctly for getting the great results. You should really see the reviews to take the service.

Well link building IS part of SEO

The problem is that people think that Link building is THE SEO by itself, and start expecting results just from it.

I have a friend who has his own 'web design company' which is very unprofessional. His idea of seo is buy 1 fiverr gig then charge the client about 20times the cost of the fiverr gig for the SEO. I literally mean 20 times the price as well.

Personally I don't even see how he can moraly do it. I would feel terrible for ripping people off like that. It will probably catch up with him one day though.

I once did a computer repair job for a guy and he showed me his website. Turned out his web design company was charging him a £100 a quater 'google submission fee' (he didn't even know what it was in which I told him Google is free and they were scamming him). He also paid £300 for some seo work and they just stuffed his meta tag and didn't even change his title tag!!! I told him he should take them to court and TBH I hope he did.


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I can't count how many people I speak to who have had bad experiences with SEO companies and there's a common theme. Going cheap.

I'm not saying that a proper, reputable and worthy company can't provide reasonably priced services but people go for the company that guarantees page 1 within a month for £100. The victim (customer) then thinks SEO is a whole load of bullshit and this often has an effect on real SEO providers who refuse to offer No 1 guarantees and give realistic timeframes and expect to be paid as an expert.

Why would anyone trust their business success to a person they're paying $7 an hour?

you are right..
every company saying that proper.....guarantees ....

Exactly no any SEO agency knows whats your plan they just go black hat... and take your money away...

Due to penguin and panda update, it has become very difficult to optimize a keyword!

So if there are some seo companies who are not able to optimize, because of the updates, they need time to understand algorithm.

it happens when a small business want to compete medium or big business in its industry but can't spend according to that. it will receive offers from low quality companies.

currently there are 60% SEO companies offer results at very cheap rates and unable to deliver commited results. which develops this choas.........

If they had good experience, they wouldn't be coming to you.

It depends on the person / people who are doing the job. If the people are morally bankrupt then they are bound to cheat their clients, money isn't the issue I think, honesty is. no matter how much you get paid if you are honest you will do the job perfectly.

It is possible many of these firms are crooks. I will not call them thieves though, but they can be dodgy at times. They want to make money, sometimes money can turn you dodgy.