Seo company - below performance.

[mrgazer]

Hi all

Will keep this brief and short. So a few years ago, I had appointed a seo company to carry out varies seo Campaigns, I believe we paid over £3500 over the period of 5 months.

They were covering areas like blog posts, on site seo, off site seo, link building etc.. We were paying in excess of £500 a month back then, with the expectation that there will be positive results with the Campaigns.

After all, it turns out that all the money goes to drain, while some of the keywords they were ranking even went down in ranking.

I got very disappointed and express me dissatisfaction, they then blamed that our site is poorly built in the first place, and blaming that it was hard to get our approval to blogs - their blogs were just a brunch of words put together and didnt make sense. They also made a huge mess of our html where fonts were uneven within the site, without the ability to put things right..

I requested a partial refund, but they refused, 3 years down the line, one of our partners brought up that we can actually put a claim through via small claims and got us thinking whether or not to go down this route after 3 years later.

What is everyone's opinion on this?

Many thanks

 

[AllUpHere]

3 years is a long time. I'd imagine you've got it sorted by now so will it not be difficult to prove what they did and didn't do?

 

[nelioneil]

Why 3 years down the line, are you still suffering from poor SEO?

I would forget about this.

 

[mrgazer]

If you guys were in my shoe, I think you would view the situation very differently.

The incident happened not long after I started my business. They supplied a very poor service, not only did it affected my sale hugely. But resulted in further expenses to fix their error.

Not only had they wasted £3500 of my hard earn cash, I had to employ seo fix specialist to remove all their bad links they had implemented, fixed all the blogs with issue, fixed all onsite seo that had issues, and also removed their modification on my website that caused html issue.

I had spent over £6500 to correct their work, this slowly took us back to where we were before. With the loss in sale, I estimate we had lost over £9000 of businesses throughout these period.

That was almost 20k loss on a start up business, which was more than my annual salary back then.

I have had a very bad time back then, because of these I had to take out a loan to resolve the issues they caused.

They refused to fix their work was one thing, their bad work resulted my huge finical loss is another thing. Which is something I will never forget.

 

[Mr D]

So is there any evidence?

 

[mrgazer]

I have all the keyword ranking log.
I have all email correspondence.

 

[Mr D]

And you offered them the chance to correct the mistakes?

 

[maxbrainer]

I would talk to an attorney regarding this matter because any response you get to your thread is going to be from a layman's point of view. I would categorize my post here as a layman's response but it doesn't mean you, the thread starter, shouldn't pay attention to what people suggest because that is why you posted to begin with. I would ask the attorney if there is a statute of limitations on this lawsuit and proceed accordingly. If you have a lawsuit, I would then present the binding, signed contract you entered into with the SEO company to the lawyer. If the contract states that the SEO company was to increase your SEO or promises you a #1 Google rank, etc. and doesn't perform what they were contractually bound to do you might be able to sue for breech of contract. You also had mentioned that the SEO company used bad back linking and had modified your website somehow. I believe this an example of negligence which is another reason to show evidence of what your alleging has happened. If you can afford it--fight them tooth and nail

 

[Newchodge]

Have you checked that the original supplier still exists and is solvent (ie can afford to pay your claim)? If they are not, stop now.

 

[fisicx]

If the contract states that the SEO company was to increase your SEO or promises you a #1 Google rank, etc.

If won't. They are very cleverly written and won't make any promises.

I have all the keyword ranking log.
I have all email correspondence.

What you need is evidence of the actual changes they made to the site and a list of the links they the links they created. You need exact details and dates. Without these you have no case.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

I can understand why you are still bitter about this but imagine all you would stand to get is the original money if you were lucky, I doubt you would get consequential losses.

Far better to put the past behind you and concentrate of the future, most of us have been turned over by SEO and Adwords cowboys in the past. SEO basics are easy to follow by anyone, all modern sites are seo friendly from start and the rest is relatively easy if you do some research, forget blogs unless you have a loyal following selling a regular buying product and Links in my opinion are a total waste of time pushed by people who think they are cleverer by fooling Google ( they cant)

 

[STDFR33]

Stinks of a company doing poorly and clutching at straws.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

I doubt you would get consequential losses, should read would not get consequential losses

 

[Alan]

I requested a partial refund, but they refused, 3 years down the line,

Really ... you should have acted sooner IMHO