Pay for SEO?

[truongn2]

I was wondering if paying for the service of getting your website listed in the top ten of search engine real? And more importantly, does it actually work?

I am looking at this website right now, it looks good but I am still wary:

truongn2

[edited by: pageoneresults at 11:35 pm (utc) on Feb. 28, 2006]
[edit reason] Removed URI Reference - Please Refer to TOS [/edit]

[briggidere]

nah. i wouldn't do it. if they guarantee any listings in the SE's they are lying. no-one can offer such a guarantee.
if a company is good at seo, they will ask you about your business, what you want to achieve etc. if they are not asking questions like that, i'd stay away from them.

briggidere

[sem_scotty]

top 10 for how long? ;)

they may achieve it, but there's a likelihood that they'll be getting there via black hat practices, which not only work in the short-term, but also hurt you in the very long-term.

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[MikaelTC]

Some firms promise to get you top listings, but fail to mention that they really mean top CPC listings, which is easy to do. The few firms that I've experienced feed off of small business executives who don't know what SEO really is, and they charge a lot of money for some scare tactics and a magic black box process that they never explain. When I was still doing freelance work I got a couple jobs cleaning up after some of these black hat folks, they can leave quite a mess.

On the other hand, I got started by being paid for SEO, so there are some folks out there who do good work (If I may be so bold as to include myself). I never advertised, though, I was busy enough with personal referrals. Some other SEO folks I've talked to also don't advertise, can't say there's a correlation with only 3 data but...