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But today I get a call from a SEO company. They say that they guarantee top 10 placement for 80% of the keywords that I would choose. Even highly competitive keywords.
I asked if this would require changes on our code or content. He said no. I asked if they worked with people inside the SE companies. He said no.
So I insisted that I don't believe in any offer of top ten placements for competitive words if it won't require changes to my site or anything like that.
He insists that they have a software and can do that, and they guarantee the results.
What do you think about it? Any advice?
Send me a private message if you would like to know the name of the company, in case you had a bad experience with some of these companies.
Thanks a lot for helping.
If you really want to see him prove it...let him apply his "tricks" to a throw away domain. Then you'll see what he's doing.
If they give guaranties they are hiding something or not giving you the hole picture
any seo company that is cold calling on the telephone offering such a deal is not offering what you think (maybe they will just bid on a few keywords on day) if they can genuinely get top natural serps rankings for highly competative keywords then word would spread quick and they wouldn't be having to cold call prospective punters.
The thing is that he made me do some searches for pretty high competitive terms like Lingerie, Eletronics, and Discount laptops, and they were #1 or #2 for them.
That could be luck. Or maybe they just got these people as clients after they were already top results.
When they say guarantee, I mean money back guarantee.
Have you ever worked for an SEO company? Specifically, one that is just starting out?
My guess is no. If you had, then you would know that your statement is completely false.
Business is tough, and the word doesn't just spread quickly, as you suggest.
When a business is just starting out, the majority of the time is spent on the phone trying to SELL the business to potential customers. Even if the product or service will sell itself, you have to get someone to listen first.
Cold-calling and sales isn't just for crappy services and products.
If they wanted to do what you said, they wouldn't be SEO firms, they would be affiliate marketers. SEO firms need clients. To get clients, sometimes you need to get on the phone and sell.
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I should note that I don't work for an SEO firm. I simply don't like members posting false statements.
... but cold calling making solid seo guarantees is suspect although not neccesairily false, good link text from a few sites is more than enough for success in a lot of keywords i should think, so it is entirely possible to do what they are claiming given that they control enough sites to link out from.
word spreads slow, yes, but it does get about eventually just like for all business - and like most business, the best at selling are successful rather than the so called 'best' at doing,
...however i would disclaim that i was just passing my opinion based on a number of calls (and discussions with the salespeople) i have received myself and the results that other people i know have had from responding to cold calls in this sector.
i am not in the seo business myself and have never employed a seo company.
ps. i stand corrected that i did overstate my case in my earlier post
I'm sure there are some legit people out there making cold calls but because of the volume of bad ones it would be hard for anybody to know which ones are which. It is just safe to assume they all are.
I just don't like cold calls it is just more SPAM. There are just too many people in the world selling things for SPAM to be legit in any form. If every legit business called me I would have to get a new phone number. It's rude.
No, actually, it isn't.
Also, there are occasions when you see a target market which could easily be dominated by an existing player that just isn't using the right approach. That company wouldn't approach you out of the blue if they aren't aware of SEO.
Those opportunities are worth the cold call/email if you are really confident of what you could do for them. If they accept and you do what you claimed you could I imagine they would chime in on one of these types of posts as being in favor.
It's true that most/many SEO firms don't need to do things like this to get business but with even some of the most successful ones the fact is that their clients don't go around telling everyone they meet "hey these guys will get you to the top!". Why would they? Many SEO firms don't want to attract attention by going after top SEO related keywords also.
Ogletree,
Just use google for a quick spell check. Works 90% of the time for me.
Sure, give me enough money and I will buy kw's at Overuture to make you #1 too.
Cold calling is only used by scam artists.
Actually cold calling is used by most growing businesses in this sector - just like anything else some of them are scam artists. There's nothing wrong with cold calling per se - it is just the products that some people are trying to sell that are questionable - and they would still be quiestionable even if they didn't cold call.
Google Adwords sales teams do a lot of cold calling - does that make them scam artists?
With regards to guaranteed top placement - yes, it's a scam. Go for an SEO company that will increase your ROI, grow your targeted traffic from search engines and help you to convert that traffic into sales.
"purple parrot toenail clippings"-cost $50
"cheap hotels"-cost $2M
They say that they guarantee top 10 placement for 80% of the keywords that I would choose. Even highly competitive keywords.
I bet I could do this - but there's one gotcha.
I'm gonna bet you can't just give him 20 keywords - and expect them to get top 10 for 16 of them.
I think for most industries there's a couple dozen super-competitive keywords and maybe a hundred or so semi-competitive.
If they require a pool of 1000 keywords to choose from - I could imagine them getting in the top 10 for 800 of them. It's just those 800 might yield 2% of the traffic of the other 200.
I am a web marketer and I did a pretty good job getting all our product pages listed on google and other SEs...
>>>Should I trust a SEO company that says guarantees top placements?
Ok, so someone maybe is cheating... People cheat at work, love and play. Not a revelation. It's in the air we breathe.
I heard this tonight:
Being happy is an act of resistance.
For the SO CALLED SEO that says he can get you a top ranking for any keyword with out touching your site content it's a lie, unless he can get you links and a lot of them too. I would not do it because they called you without you asking and they are likely nothing less than a scam.
They or no one should call or email you without you asking for it! It's THAT EASY, DON'T CALL ME!
Sure, give me enough money and I will buy kw's at Overuture to make you #1 too. - brett
is pretty much what i said
maybe they will just bid on a few keywords - topr8
but no-one shoots him down i notice!
Don't trust them. They can't guarantee top placements in search engines because they can't guarantee that algorithms and rating systems will not change hugely over night.
They're not going to optimise your site. They're going to do something else - and typically this means doorway pages. I suppose this might not the be the case but it doesn't help me trust them.
(and I don't like/trust the cold calling)
If A SEO can't get you a top ranking than whats the point of getting a SEO?
Getting more traffic and sales. That does not always mean high ranking for big terms. If you are a small company with no national exposure or name recognition and a low budget the only way to get high ranking for top terms is to game the system. Now if you want high converting very directed traffic that can be done and promised. There are plenty of medium to low traffic terms that will get you business.
If they do not appear in the positions that they promise you (often top 10), then tell them to forget it.
If they can't do it for themselves, they quite possibly can't do it for you either.
This gets rid of thousands of these callers.
Some of the largest, and most successful SEO companies don't show in the top results. Many companies don't have time to continuously work on battling their site to the top for "SEO" while still working on their clients sites and running a business. Who has more time to work on gaining rankings for "SEO":
1) the pure spam company who has 1 client that they tricked into signing up
2) the SEO company that has a full roster of clients, including fortune 500 companies that require them to visit their headquarters, make presentations, etc, etc.
What you should do is ask for examples of performance. I am sure they will be happy to show you some sample rankings for clients.
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Honestly folks, if you don't really know what you're talking about, then don't say anything. That is the second or third time in this thread that someone has blurted out something that is completely false. It is comments like this that hurt the business and the real companies out there that are trying to make it.
Some of the largest, and most successful SEO companies don't GUARANTEE TOP PLACEMENTS (but they do promise a better ranking).
Isn't that the title of the thread (trusting a SEO company that says GUARANTEES top placements)?
