Anyone heard of B-1st

phoned up offering guaranteed first place positioning

[nickc001]

Has anyone heard of B-1st and used their services? They found me through my overture PPC listings.

Sales guy said they guarantee first page positioning on the 9 major engines or money back.

However have never heard of them before.

[tigger]

Never heard of them, anyone that offers guarantee first page rankings is probably just reselling Overture bids.

[Kevin]

Being first through PPC is a given - If you have the budget that is.

The real issue is can they increase your online sales?

[Mike_Mackin]

Lots of Directors of FindWhat are from BeFirst.

Set up fee + ppc model

They have a good client list which I can't find at the moment.

[Kevin]

Hi Mike,
Sure your not confusing b-1st and befirst companies.

One is US based the other is UK based.

I think we are talking about the UK one.

[Mike_Mackin]

ahhhhhhh
Sorry

[gsx]

If they guarantee first position on nine engines, put them to the test. When/if they ring back, ask them what phrases they have targetted their own site at. If they are not top at all nine engines, ask them how they offer the service to you if they can't do it for themselves? (Don't allow them to include company name in the phrases - most people can find your site by company name anyway and if they know the name they are less likely to go to a competitor anyway)

[Mike12345]

Ive heard of them, ive used them, my personal opinion is dont bother with them, they use bad techique in my opinion, and there guarantee is useless.

If you want more detail sticky me

:)

[tosspot17]

Have jsut recieved a call from them, and an email with some of the positions they have achieved.

Am still dubious, but i've had so many people like this i may be too cynical.

[nickc001]

I have looked at the source of one of the examples they have sent and they look to position a block of 'search engine friendly' text off the page by using negative style sheet positioning

i.e. something similar to this:

position:absolute; left:-50000; width:5110px; height:100px; top:30px;

Would this be treated as spam by the search engines?

Is this what is happening. The examples sent are not pay per click listings, they are in the non paid search results.

[makemetop]

There are rather a lot of SEO/SEM companies in Lancaster. Most have rather bad track records. A certain search provider allegedly have a large map of the UK with all SEM companies they are aware of marked as good, bad or indifferent. Lancaster has a disproportionate number of the last 2!

Get referrals from clients.

[buckworks]

I would "just say no". My theory is that an ethical SEO firm who really know what they're doing will be too busy for cold-calling.

[edited by: buckworks at 5:26 pm (utc) on Mar. 6, 2003]

[gsx]

Maybe Lancaster has just one or two bad companies trading under many different names. It makes the genuine SEO's look bad.

[makemetop]

Funny how nearly all the people in Lancaster seem to do 'search engineering' - and very few people call SEO/SEM that anywhere else.

[bada_bing]

I dont think that you can that anybody who cold calls is no good...I have been "cold called" by overture themselves in the UK.

Maybe Lancaster has some good companies and some bad...but then does'nt most towns have some good companies and some bad companies and not just SEO/SEM but any type of business

[tigger]

Yep, I agree with you there's nothing wrong with cold calling, everyone has to start somewhere, so long as they make sure if they get a "No thanks" they leave it at that and don't keep calling every month

[ukgimp]

nickc001

Ohh yes that be spam.

Negative div's with text in as a means to trick the SE's you have content is spam. That is not a long term strategy and will end up getting a person busted. Providing stuff for SE's and not people is against the guidleine of google

[google.com...]

[bada_bing]

don't think lancaster can stake a claim on coining search engineering...just found a book at Amazon

Just done a google search and found a book called "search engineering" but then again maybe the author is from lancaster