SEO Crap information

[FunkyBears]

I contacted a guy on these forums regarding his SEO services. His reply was he only worked online! This told me he couldn't be bothered to phone me to discuss my requirements and was maybe working for an SEO company. He had been helpful to me so I thought I would give him a second chance and asked about his SEO services.
He came back with some startling examples of his SEO work, he had manged to get a client on Page 1 of google for a term that had a staggering 140 local searches a month and another client on Page 1 Google for a term that nobody whatsoever searches for!
Does he think I'm a complete fool ! Maybe I ambut where does that put him?

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I contacted a guy on these forums regarding his SEO services. His reply was he only worked online! This told me he couldn't be bothered to phone me to discuss his requirements and was maybe working for an SEO company. He had neen helpful to me so I thought I would give him a second chance and asked about his SEO services.
He came back with some startling examples of his SEO work, he had manged to get a client on Page 1 of google for a term that had a staggering 140 local searches a month and another client on Page 1 Google for a term that nobody whatsoever searches for!
Does he think I'm a complete fool ! Maybe I am but where does that put him?

On top of the 'rejected' pile hopefully

 

[maxh]

HAHAHA!

Top business there "sorry I know you've enquired about my services but I actually can't be tossed to follow it up and potentially close some new business"

Gotta meet that millionaire genius...

 

[Tin]

Does he think I'm a complete fool ! Maybe I am but where does that put him?

Probably somewhere similar.

 

[Dave Thomas]

but surely clients dont need to talk to their marketing guys do they!!!!! (joke) OOOOO dear, its a shame tho as this will be another adition to the bad taste, cowboy, negative experience club..that your are now armed with..keep going you will find help...

 

[directmarketingadvice]

I contacted a guy on these forums regarding his SEO services.

Presumably you contacted him because he talked a good game on here?

Steve

 

[MASSEY]

wow, good guess by me. What exactly does only work onilne mean, isnt all seo done online?

 

[OldWelshGuy]

wow, good guess by me. What exactly does only work onilne mean, isnt all seo done online?

I believe it means no telephone contact.

I have 2 clients that are purely online only communication, but that is their choice. i FAR prefer telephone or face to face, we are not all the same

 

[Spock]

I don't care if it's email or phone – as long as the job gets done

 

[highlandspring]

I have spent 2 years trying to convince a couple of US SEO experts to work for me on a project - each time I get hold of them the answer is we are not taking on new business / go away.

Seems the best people can pick and choose whilst the rest of us have to bounce around the second tier players.

 

[highlandspring]

Old Welsh guy is pretty difficult to get to work for you! LOL!!

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Old Welsh guy is pretty difficult to get to work for you! LOL!!

Ok so which one are you then? Mr or Mrs?

 

I have spent 2 years trying to convince a couple of US SEO experts to work for me on a project - each time I get hold of them the answer is we are not taking on new business / go away.

Seems to be a problem when its an individual SEO or small business as the better SEO's have work coming out there ears.:|

The choice for many is then the larger SEO companies .

It would be nice if more SEO's verified there abilities in order that the choice was greater.IMHO

Earl

 

[Codefixer]

I don't see a problem with someone only working online. I have worked with someone who chooses this method, and I've worked successfully with him for over 4 years. There's times when I'd like to call him, but I respect the way he works.

I presume he has alot of clients, and doesn't want to encourage people phoning him up, and taking 10 minutes when everything could be said and documented in an email in secs.

It might not be ideal and obviously won't work for everyone and every situation but it can work.

In relation to the OP, if I'm correct in who I think you are referring to, wouldn't the signature have told you straightaway of the quality of work, and level of support that you would receive.

 

[MASSEY]

There arent many members i would hire on here, 10 at most. The rest seem to just call themselves an seo one day. I would feel more confident hiring myself.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

There arent many members i would hire on here, 10 at most. The rest seem to just call themselves an seo one day. I would feel more confident hiring myself.

Wouldn't that cause tax implications

 

[david64]

Does he think I'm a complete fool ! Maybe I ambut where does that put him?

It's pretty easy to waffle and make yourself sound like the top don. There was a guy on here a while back who was getting a lot of good feedback by hoisting the white hat banner high and parroting Rand Fishkin. I managed to find one of his projects, which had obviously had a big investment in term of content but was a measly PR1, non-ranking blip in a cutt-throat, super-affiliate drenched industry. Project appears to have been abandoned.

If you are looking for SEOs who can go beyond PR0-3 blims, pumped full of directory & article garbage try one of:

http://www.britecorp.co.uk/
http://www.redevolution.com/
http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/

Or if you want to hire some of the most furious bilge pump crankers, feast your eyes.

 

[RadiusBPO]

I don't see a problem with email only communication. Personally it allows me to be flexible and do what I want when I want, and when I am working I don't get distracted by a call.

But we are in a slow burning industry so there are very rarely disasters which require urgent attention.

 

[omnivore]

I have spent 2 years trying to convince a couple of US SEO experts to work for me on a project - each time I get hold of them the answer is we are not taking on new business / go away.

Seems the best people can pick and choose whilst the rest of us have to bounce around the second tier players.

there's a few like that on here!!!!

 

[cmcp]

To be fair you sound like a loose cannon of a client, he's probably better off without you.

In other news, SEO guys in talking bullsh!t shocker

 

[GNU]

There arent many members i would hire on here, 10 at most. The rest seem to just call themselves an seo one day. I would feel more confident hiring myself.

Thats the point ANYONE can call themselves an SEO, there are no qualifications and very few skills required. It is entirely knowledge based, anyone who can scavenge links can set up shop.

I saw one guy recently putting himself about as "SEO Expert since 1999" or some claptrap like that in a forum asking what the info: operator does in google.

Another one who offers SEO, web development etc and claims to code everything himself in one forum appears in another openly admitting he has no clue about SEO and once posted to ask how to php include a sidebar (v basic stuff). That goon did not even think to change is username in the different forums... that is how I found him... taking coin off one set of users, adding a percentage and hawking it out to another... ridiculous.

None of the above relates to this forum... in case you were wondering

 

[London Photographer]

I had a similar discussion with a guy that promised page one and then did not want to know anything about my site, but was very keen on me committing £400 a month for his services. It is very hard to see what they are doing for their money and after 4 months of research I have managed to get my Corporate photographer London blog into 3 position on page 1. Its quite easy to do but takes time, backlinks and getting your site onto directories- nothing clever just a bit of research- once you have done this you can see how easy it would be to do it again for someone else. Grant

 

[marque]

I am surprised at how much spare time some people who are supposedly running successfully company's have to spend on this forum with what looks like banter rather than business.

Does make you wonder what is really going on............

 

[Unicora]

It is frustrating to see those who try to pass themselves off as experts because they submit sites to a few low rent directories. lol

The other frustrating one is the PR status. In reality the PR you see is a snapshot of your old PR and doesn't give you any more traffic or sales. Getting highly ranked for good keywords is what counts and the PR will naturally follow.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I am surprised at how much spare time some people who are supposedly running successfully company's have to spend on this forum with what looks like banter rather than business.

Does make you wonder what is really going on............

the other angle though is that many people are sat at a desk, and for a break to refresh their brains, they dip into a forum or two.

Google insist that their employees do 20% of work not task related. many have pet projects that move into Labs and sometimes get into the mainstream.

You need a break, and a forum is sometimes good for a mental face wash.

 

[eog]

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/seo/how-to-get-rich-quick-and-make-tons-of-money-with-seo/440

I think a few so called SEO experts might follow the steps in the above blog

 

[david64]

Its quite easy to do but takes time, backlinks and getting your site onto directories- nothing clever just a bit of research- once you have done this you can see how easy it would be to do it again for someone else. Grant

I can see from your site that you are already have enough knowledge to set-up an entry-level SEO company. As you say, the work involved is a walk in the park. All a lot of SEOs do is roll this out time and time again. Nothing wrong with that, most people can't afford the high-end SEO you will read about on SEOMoz; and you can't hire someone for bottom dollar to do high-end work.

I am surprised at how much spare time some people who are supposedly running ... Does make you wonder what is really going on............

There's not much to it. You can rank sites in many niches on auto-pilot. There is a guy on here with about 600 sites with varying rankings from diddler keywords to relativley competitive. Most of those have only had maybe 10 minutes of SEO work on them, because you can roll these things out again and again.

It's when you working at the higher level where you can't just steam-roll your way up that you can't spend all day waffling in forum.

It is frustrating to see those who try to pass themselves off as experts because they submit sites to a few low rent directories.

Yes

The other frustrating one is the PR status. In reality the PR you see is a snapshot of your old PR and doesn't give you any more traffic or sales. Getting highly ranked for good keywords is what counts and the PR will naturally follow.

Don't agree with that at all. You get a lot of people saying PR is worthless, green pixie dust etc. etc; but if you want to rank in the real competitive niches, you need an SEO/company that are able to provide links from pages that have high PageRank. You can't rank for some terms with PR2 sites no matter how many keyed links you have coming in; and some SEOs have trouble generating links that can get this PR. In a competitive niche, ranking is requires links from pages with PageRank and links with the anchor, because your competitors have that too - sliding scale.

PR is also still the primary factor in deciding the price of paid links.

 

[FunkyBears]

The OP has contacted me via PM and sent some far better examples of his SEO work and he has explained his reasons for not using phone contact.
Thanks
Paul

 

[eog]

are they actually his examples to show? lol

 

Thats the point ANYONE can call themselves an SEO, there are no qualifications and very few skills required.

That is simply not true.

All you have to do is ask the SEO for examples of there work to date.

And maybe ring a few of there clients for references.

Whats so hard about that.?:|

Don't listen to there speil,look at the facts.

Earl

 

[david64]

That is simply not true.

Exactly what do you mean isn't true? Anyone do call themselves an SEO. I know someone who went on an SEO training course and now calls themselves an "SEO expert" (quote) and has technical SEO blurb on their site that is several years out of date.

There are other SEOs on here and when you look through their links all you will find are comments, articles and directory links. It doesn't take long to learn how to do those and get the most out of them. This is money work that the companies farm out east.

I know guy who set up an on-the-side online store; someone told him how to buy links and off that he has a website making circa £750 a month for about 10-20 hours of work a month. He could quite easily do the rest of the required work on that site. It's easy. Most anyone can do it. The photographer, Grant, above is proof of that. Apparentley has more going for him from that example than some for hire on here.

I know another guy, didn't know HTML from spaghetti junction 4 years ago, he got a site, SEO advice and is now getting about 8,000 unique visitors a day - all off his own work. He wouldn't call himself an SEO - still asks me for advice, even though there are probably few on here who have single-handedly built up such a well trafficked site.

SEO is, in most cases, easy. Plenty of people have ranked their sites having known nothing about it.

 

Exactly what do you mean isn't true? Anyone do call themselves an SEO. I know someone who went on an SEO training course and now calls themselves an "SEO expert" (quote) and has technical SEO blurb on their site that is several years out of date.

There are other SEOs on here and when you look through their links all you will find are comments, articles and directory links. It doesn't take long to learn how to do those and get the most out of them. This is money work that the companies farm out east.

I know guy who set up an on-the-side online store; someone told him how to buy links and off that he has a website making circa £750 a month for about 10-20 hours of work a month. He could quite easily do the rest of the required work on that site. It's easy. Most anyone can do it. The photographer, Grant, above is proof of that. Apparentley has more going for him from that example than some for hire on here.

I know another guy, didn't know HTML from spaghetti junction 4 years ago, he got a site, SEO advice and is now getting about 8,000 unique visitors a day - all off his own work. He wouldn't call himself an SEO - still asks me for advice, even though there are probably few on here who have single-handedly built up such a well trafficked site.

SEO is, in most cases, easy. Plenty of people have ranked their sites having known nothing about it.

I meant checking out whether an SEO is skilled.

Easy as hell to check if the results an SEO has are high quality competative areas across the board.

Earl

 

[david64]

I meant checking out whether an SEO is skilled.

Easy as hell to check if the results an SEO has are high quality competative areas across the board.

Sorry, misread you on that one.

Yes. Although, problem with testimonials is that many SEOs have sock puppets they can wheel out to praise them; and many people seeking SEO aren't savy enough to check out their SEO and even know if they were responsible for the rankings. And, they don't know how to judge which SEOs are most suitable for them.

There are plenty of ways to mislead people who don't know about search. One I saw that made me laugh (guy has got rid of it now) is an SEO consultant who showed screenshots of a few of his flimsy rankings on his homepage and capped it off with a screenshot showing his site ranking for his company name with a caption reading something like, "Here I am ranking for my company name, think of the potential for branding..."

When I was in the game, hardly anyone asked me for examples of work. Was always quite surprised about that.

 

[aidan1980]

the other angle though is that many people are sat at a desk, and for a break to refresh their brains, they dip into a forum or two.

Google insist that their employees do 20% of work not task related. many have pet projects that move into Labs and sometimes get into the mainstream.

You need a break, and a forum is sometimes good for a mental face wash.

I agree 100% until you end up arguing on a football forum for an hour and a half like i did today, DOH

 

[GNU]

That is simply not true.

It is absolutely true, I see people do it all the time.

I get spam mails from people claiming first page results, ethical WH seo.

I mention above someone who claims to be an "SEO Expert" and online marketer since 1999 who did not know what the info: operator did in Google.

I mention another guy who is just a reseller of other peoples services.

All you have to do is ask the SEO for examples of there work to date.

They will lie

And maybe ring a few of there clients for references.

They will end the conversation or perhaps give sites they control or are affiliated with as examples, giving the same examples to customer after customer.

Whats so hard about that.?:|
Don't listen to there speil,look at the facts.
Earl

If you are able to analyse "The Facts" then you are probably capable of doing half the work yourself. The problem is that most people have no idea of how to analyse the SERPs and little understanding of SEO.

Anywhere there is money to be made and an absense of knowledge scammers make their bed.

SEO is one of the most corrupt online "industries" behind the three P's and bogus info products.

If I set up shop tomorrow and start calling myself an "SEO Expert" who is going to stop me?

There is no Law society, or Institute of Chartered Accountants... there is no professional body what so ever... nothing. I can do whatever I like, charge whatever I like and do as much or as little work as I like, ethical, black hat it matters not. I can do as I please, and most SEO companies do just that.

I am sure you did not miss threads in here where a well known "ethical white hat SEO company" was found to be inserting hidden directories onto clients sites and other shinanigans.

 

If you are able to analyse "The Facts" then you are probably capable of doing half the work yourself. The problem is that most people have no idea of how to analyse the SERPs .

So you think the average person can not tell how highly a site ranks for a keyword or phrase and is not capable of picking up a phone and asking the owner of the site who did there SEO.?


From Google Read carefully.

And like chosing a solicitor or an accountant use due diligence.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

Earl

 

[GNU]

So you think the average person can not tell how highly a site ranks for a keyword or phrase and is not capable of picking up a phone and asking the owner of the site who did there SEO.?
Earl

I am saying that the average person cannot tell how a site was ranked or how difficult the term was to rank for.

Scammers give details of sites they are affiliated with or control. Call them and you will get an endorsement, just like you may see sock puppets used to pimp a product or service in a forum.

All you need is:

3 or 4 ranking sites
Fake whois
3 or 4 skype numbers
Someone to take the calls

easy peasy

I have a lot of sites and consequently get a lot of these solicitations:

"Do you wish you could increase your online leads? Getting a GUARANTEED 1ST PAGE GOOGLE RANKING is easier and more cost-effective than you might think.
We have helped a lot of businesses thrive in this market and we can help you! Simply hit reply and I'll share with you the cost and the benefits See you at the top!"


Its absolutely rife.

That is a more sever example, but over charging / lying about the complexity / time spent / nature of work seems to be pretty much standard procedure with 80% of operators.

"Ethical White Hat SEO" usually = Grey Hat Spam

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I am saying that the average person cannot tell how a site was ranked or how difficult the term was to rank for.

That right there is key. I could show rankings for phrases that the average joe would think amazing with a capital A. But theya re not. OTOH, a ranking at #1 for a brand lingerie phrase might not bat an eye, yet it has been for me one of the hardest markets to work in. Harder than the sex toy and mortgage industry due to the fact everyone is chasing rankings on a small number of brands.

As someone once said, if you can tell the good advice from the bad advice, then you didn't need the advice in the first place

 

[david64]

"Do you wish you could increase your online leads? Getting a GUARANTEED 1ST PAGE GOOGLE RANKING is easier and more cost-effective than you might think.
We have helped a lot of businesses thrive in this market and we can help you! Simply hit reply and I’ll share with you the cost and the benefits See you at the top!"


Its absolutely rife.

A relative of mine works for a private school. They get loads of these emails, as well as emails from web design companies. One went something along the lines of telling them that if they are spending money on SEO, they are wasting their money because all you need is a properly built site and it will take you to the top. Their site was not indexed in Google.

All these emails from web swizz-diddlers were sent to me asking me what I thought of the company. These people just don't have a clue. They don't know the first thing about Google. An "SEO-head" can fill 'em full of it, as they are renowned for doing.

Same with web dev. Know someone who as majority swizz diddled several times by web developers. The web is a sewer, full of stuff that floats in sewers. You see all these web devs. rattling on about their cutting-end code and then botching sites out in WordPress and Joomla, two stone-age, security riddled dinos. Noobs don't have the knowledge of this web gubbins and much of the time neither do the experts.

 

[GNU]

As someone once said, if you can tell the good advice from the bad advice, then you didn't need the advice in the first place

LOL yeah...

I am not anti SEO... I have a great interest in it and have met some greaty people throught it, and its very interesting... the fact that its like "the wild west" is one of the things I like about it... but that is a big problem for small businesses wanting some help.

Unlike programming, networking etc there are no professional qualifications or professional bodies and pricing is very rarely transparrent, it is extremely difficult to compare services / quotes if as you say, "you need advice in the first place".