# SEO services companies... a SCAM or REAL?



## RedLetterGear (May 1, 2007)

Hey guys,

So i got a call today from this SEO service company. They basically offered a service saying they can put my website up on the top 25 of search results within a few months. It's really expense, but more importantly, are these just scams or do they really work? 

Anybody have experience with companies like that? I'm kinda skeptical. Thanks for any input.

Cheers,
Mamie


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## kentphoto (Jan 16, 2006)

RedLetterGear said:


> Hey guys,
> 
> So i got a call today from this SEO service company. They basically offered a service saying they can put my website up on the top 25 of search results within a few months. It's really expense, but more importantly, are these just scams or do they really work?
> 
> ...


I traded some photography for some SEO work. It does work, and is usually pricey depending on what side your on. Payer/payee. 

With some reasearch, reading, etc, it's something you could work on and do a lot of it yourself.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

RedLetterGear said:


> Hey guys,
> 
> So i got a call today from this SEO service company. They basically offered a service saying they can put my website up on the top 25 of search results within a few months. It's really expense, but more importantly, are these just scams or do they really work?
> 
> ...


If they are cold calling you to solicit their services, my first reaction would be SCAM (or hyped up marketing).

SEO does work, but there's no guarantee that the company that is calling you works or knows what they're doing or is legitimate.

Cafepress does most of the SEO work for you due to the way they have their stores setup (I did some SEO consulting work for them back in the day). 

You can also read up on Search Engine Optimization on your own and follow the tips and suggestions posted by trusted sources.

Read some threads here about SEO. Here's a good starter thread: http://www.t-shirtforums.com/t-shirt-marketing/t5996.html


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## RedLetterGear (May 1, 2007)

Thanks for both your inputs. Actually, I'm kinda creeped out on how they even got my number. Ah the perils of internet....


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## T-BOT (Jul 24, 2006)

it's a scam.  






:


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## kentphoto (Jan 16, 2006)

I was called for weeks and weeks by some company in the States (I'm in Canada) about some problems with my source code, and how they wanted to talk to me about it. 

They would call at least once a week for about two months. 

Never called them back. Not into the cold call marketing tactic.


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## mashPotato (Apr 11, 2007)

I think even if you are going to hire someone to do the SEO for you. It's best that at least you read and study about SEO a bit first. At least you get a sense of what they are doing for you. Is it legitmate or just black hat SEO.


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## grundys (Mar 1, 2007)

It's always worth getting a reccomendation for stuff like this.. It can cost a bomb. Some of these people use tactics that are frowned on (my web guy explained it to me, I glazed over..). Worst case could lead to your site getting blacklisted by google. But, I agree, you should do your research.


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## RedLetterGear (May 1, 2007)

yeah, I've been trying to read up on it as much as possible. Making sure to put the right keywords on each page, have descriptions on my products, etc. But like you said, I glazed over too. but, I'm not ready to drop two grands for that kinda "service"


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## dak888 (May 9, 2007)

Do yourself a favor and do a little reading on SEO. SEO companies are pretty much preying on your ignorance (I don't mean that to sound harsh but it’s true). 

General SEO is really pretty basic and can be performed by anyone who takes some time to do a bit of research. I've been doing web design and SEO work for years and it gives me a good laugh when SEO companies contact us because "they can get us to the top of every search engine for our keywords". Please.... (insert arrogance here, lol)

Anyways, the basic building blocks are:
*Content: *Have you ever heard, "Content is king"? Well, it's true. At least in the SEO world. Content is what the spider wants to see and consists of several things as I will outline below.
*Text: *Sounds pretty simple huh? This is probably your most important piece of the content puzzle. Text, and a decent amount of it (a fine line between boring your potential customers and providing enough "food" for search engine spiders). Don't spam! Don't just repeat your keywords over and over and over and over and over and over again. Get the point! Spamming = no indexing or poor results. Search engine spiders are smarter than you think.
*Page Title:* Use an effective page title that describes what is on your page. If you’re selling t-shirts about Ford Mustangs, a page title that says "Ford Mustang T Shirts" will be pretty effective. Remember, page titles are the first thing a potential customer will see in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
*Meta** Description: *Not as relevant as it used to be for SEO but you have to remember that the description is usually the second thing potential customers will see in the SERP's after your page title. Make this as enticing as possible. This is your sales pitch. You’re going to be in a sea of listings and you need some way to make your site stand out. Use the description do make your site stand out by high lighting something special about your shirts like you offer free shipping or something to that effect. Try to keep your description to about 200 characters and DON'T STUFF IT WITH KEYWORDS!
*Meta** Keywords: *I would say don't waste your time but you might as well put them in there. Some engines still use them but after so much abuse with keyword stuffing, these are pretty much useless. However, don't stuff your meta keyword tag and limit it to a maximum of 20 terms.
*Image Alt Tags: *Readable by search engines and if your going to put images on your site, you might as well take advantage of all they have to offer. Don’t forget to name your images with keyword rich names as well.
*Header Tags: *(H1 H2 H3, etc...) Proper use of header tags should be done. The main title on your page should be enclosed in an H1 tag and should contain your targeted keywords in it. Then use your H2 and H3, etc... accordingly. Don't forget, you can easily control the size and spacing of your header tags with CSS so that your page will still look "pretty".
*Anchor Text: *The text on your page that contains a link. The most popular is "Click Here" and it takes you off to some page...What a waste of space. Anchor text is actually weighed pretty heavy by spiders. Use descriptive keywords in your anchor text. For example: If the link you are creating goes to a page about Ford Mustang T-Shirts, then use "Ford Mustang T-Shirts" as your anchor text. And hopefully the page that the link goes to has a page title of "Ford Mustang T Shirts" with and H1 tag containing the words "Ford Mustang T Shirts". Are you getting a picture here???
*Flash:* Yeah, Flash looks great, doesn't it? Too bad it's total crap for SEO. Use Flash sparingly and never for critical parts of your site like your navigation! While spiders will probably be able to completely read Flash someday, that day is not today.
*PHP, ASP, Coldfusion, etc...: *Dynamic sites are great! Easy and site building is a breeze with content management services. The problem with dynamic sites are their urls. Funky characters like ?'s, #'s and session id's can stop a spider dead in its tracks. If the spider can't follow the page, it ain't gonna index it. Make use of mod rewrite for apache servers and there is also an equivalent for windows based servers although I've never used it personally. It can be a bit overwhelming when you first start reading about mod rewrite but the time will be well spent.
*Javascript: *Javascript can do some pretty cool stuff but it's pretty much the same as Flash. Anything you put it javascript is not going to be readable to a spider. I see a lot of navigation systems built completely in javascript. You can get the same effect using a CSS based menu and all of your text will be readable by a spider! A simple search for CSS based menu will give you more than enough info and examples to get started with.
*Black Hat SEO: *Don't spam, don't use doorway pages, don't use hidden text, don't etc..... You'll find plenty of black hat tricks during your research but don't be tempted. The risk it too great and usually not worth the effort except for the quick flash in a pan....then you're gone. Literally.
*Links: *Reciprocal links are pretty much useless except to maybe drive some traffic to your site. And don't just reciprocal link with anybody, link within your business. You can actually get penalized by having reciprocal links with sites that have nothing to do with your industry. What you want are quality inbound links. Not easy to get so you'll have to figure that out.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list but should get your started in the big mysterious world of SEO (uh....yeah).

Anywho, part of your research should be to see what keywords you should be targeting. Overture.com has a great tool where you can just plunk in terms and see how many times they were searched over a certain time period. It was also give you some other suggestions that people searched. Then you need to see how much competition you have for those keywords. It's way easier to get to the top of SERPs if you only have a few thousands sites competing for that term than several million. How do you check this? Type your term into Google, look in the upper right hand corner and it will say 1-10 of about x amount of results where x = pretty much how competitive the keyword is. Using our handy Ford Mustang example, don't waste your time optimizing for "Ford" when you will have way better results for "Men’s Ford Mustang T-Shirts".

Checkout Google Analytics, It’ss free and a wealth of information can be had for your site. Terms used to find your site, cart abandonment, bounce rates, conversion goals, blah blah blah....

Ok, I'm tired of writing, maybe more later.

DaK


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## T-BOT (Jul 24, 2006)

very nice post Dak888. 




what kills me is that these SEO companies are turning out to be like the dumb and annoying *telephone* cold call sales people from 10 years ago. 

...you figure they would at least check the site on a google search to see if the site they are calling to sell to ranks or not before they call to promise #1 positions etc...  



....funny stuff i tell you.  



I agree, head over to google and read up on stuff, so much free and extremely valuable information there.



:


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## RedLetterGear (May 1, 2007)

thanks dak888. awesome post!! i'll definitely follow the steps.


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## dak888 (May 9, 2007)

Remember this, nobody can guarantee you any type or rankings unless they are running your ppc campaigns. Throw enough money at it and you'll get to the top. Think of all the business' out there and all the seo's promising top 10 positions and a little quick math will prove my point. And seo isn't a one time deal, it's something you constantly work at and tweak and results are never immediate without ppc campaigns.

When these seo companies contact you, see if they will defer payment until they obtain the goals they promise *click*...that would be the phone hanging up, lol. You give these people a bundle of money and they will pretty much give you the list of things in my earlier post with a few additions maybe. Some may even write some copy for you and put analytic code on your pages for you. You have no recourse, once they get your money, what then? What are you going to do in 3 - 6 months when your promised top 10 rankings are not coming to be? Or worse yet, they got your term for "ford mustang short sleeve orangish green like t-shirt" in the number one position on Yahoo. Well they did what they promised didn't they?

Here are a few more tid bits...

*Copy: *This is the text on your site about your products. If you sell similar products as other sites, don't get into the habit of "scraping" other sites for your content. Or worse yet, if you are a reseller for another company, don't cut and paste their copy for your product descriptions. A thousand copies of the same text on a thousand websites get you no where. Search engines are looking to deliver original and unique content to its viewers and if your content is exactly the same (or the I changed 10 of the words variety) you might as well save your time and leave your pages blank. Of course I would never recommend that but I just wanted to prove a point.
*External Files: *Move your javascript (if you use it) and your css (you should be using it) to external files when you can. Clean up the clutter in your head tags so the spiders can get to the meat of your content. Excess code in the head can affect your indexing. 
*Keyword Density: *This is how many times your keywords and keyword groupings (keywords that are strung together to form a search term) appear on the page. Don't confuse this with spamming. Higher keyword density especially in your header tags and near the top of our text blocks can help with your ranking. Again, don't confuse this with spamming. Repeating keywords just to repeat them for seo sake will get you penalized. Write content for your users and not the engines. If you write for customers, your rankings will come.

Some tools of the trade: 
*Google Analytics:* I've already mentioned this one but it's a great tool and it’s free.
*Google Webmaster Tools:* Create an account; they'll give you information about your site to help you make better decisions. And again, it's free.
*Yahoo Site Explorer:* Honestly, yahoo's version of googles webmaster tools is a joke but you can still get some valuable information about what pages yahoo has indexed. Also free.
*Webpostion Pro: *There are hundreds of pieces of software that are out there that will do what this software does. This just happens to be the one I use. What does Webposition Pro do? Read the title! It will tell you where you and your competitor’s sites rank for your keywords. You just feed it your list of words and what engines to track and it does all the hard labor for you. You have to be able to track how your changes are affecting your rankings. This is not a free program but to me, worth its weight in gold. Which its software so it’s not that heavy but you get the point.
*Webproworld.com: *My business partner and I went to a conference these guys put on out in Vegas last Nov, or Dec (I can't remember which month now, lol) about search engine strategies. They put on a great conference (hey, it was Vegas) that included reps from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask but they also have a great site with a great forum community that has a wealth of information. You may want to check it out.

Which brings me to 2 points: 
a. Do as I say and not as I do. Keep a change log. When you make changes for seo purposes, record them in a journal on what you did and when. That way if you noticed ups or downs in your position, you have a rough "guess" of what happened. (I don't currently do this but I promise I'll start tomorrow, I've been saying that for several years now...)
b. I read a great quote once but I can't remember where or what it was exactly but the gist was that if you made a change to your website a week ago and all of a sudden your ranking jumped or plummeted, it was probably something you changed a month or two ago. Take what you want from that but I interpert it as the engines just don't react that fast.

For FireFox users (and I'm not some militant FireFox user either) there are a couple of tool bars that you may want to check out.
1. Rankquest seo tool bar
2. Web developer tool bar

And if this doesn't help, you can hire me for $10,000 and I promise to get you in the top 3 of every search engine for all your keywords.

DaK


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## T-BOT (Jul 24, 2006)

your post alone is worth a few hundred $$$  . Thanks.


if anyone out there wants to see what GoogleBot sees when googleBot is crawling your webpage(s), ask googlebot to crawl and show it to you. here: View a Web Page as 'Googlebot'


...just key in your webpage URL. 


:


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## TiddliBoom.com (Aug 17, 2006)

RedLetterGear said:


> Hey guys,
> 
> So i got a call today from this SEO service company. They basically offered a service saying they can put my website up on the top 25 of search results within a few months. It's really expense, but more importantly, are these just scams or do they really work?
> 
> ...


My real job is e.g. web development and SEO, and I've been doing it for 6-7 years.
It's a business where you cannot guarantee anything - ever. Which is pretty obvious since no one except the SE themselves controls the logarithms they're using to rank sites.
Also: Ranking is a relation between you and competing sites. If you're selling hand made, blue scooters of cheese and mahogany, it wouldn't be very hard to put you among the top 25 sites in the world. If you're in porn, it would be close to impossible.
So, anyone offering guarantees when cold calling is basically a crook.
That said, real SEO might very well work, depending on several factors.


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