A real description of an SEO firm on an SEO directory:
Full service 1-on-1 SEO marketing since 1996. Check out comprised month-to-month packages at SEOgame.com (Eg. $375 package will start out at 2,220 manual directories and 550 manual article directory submissions) Manual submission services will provide permanent 1-way links and include 3 project managers and 17 site submitters to get the job done right with lots of worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk! Get to the top of the in less than a month for your top keywords today.
If you’re shopping for SEO services and you hear this type of pitch, you might figure “Hey, it’s only $375 and maybe I’ll get something out of it even though it sounds too good to be true.” But what you should be thinking is “For $375 I could take my wife out for a really, really nice night on the town, and the ROI would be higher to boot.”
Let’s take this apart piece by piece:
1. “comprised” – Beware of SEO firms that don’t use the English language correctly. To use the word “comprised” in this sentence makes no sense.
a. To consist of; be composed of: “The French got … French Equatorial Africa, comprising several territories” Alex Shoumatoff.
b. To include; contain: “The word ‘politics’ … comprises, in itself, a difficult study of no inconsiderable magnitude” Charles Dickens.
c. Usage Problem To compose; constitute: “Put together the slaughterhouses, the steel mills, the freight yards … that comprised the city” Saul Bellow.
2. $375 gets you “2,220 manual directories and 550 manual article directory submissions”. Perhaps their English is a bit off again and by “manual” they mean “automatic” or “spamming”. But let’s assume they’ve got the wording right and they are really claiming to submit your site manually to 2,220 directories and submit one or more articles about you to 550 article directories. Should you believe such a claim?
Submitting a site manually to a directory takes, at a minimum, 45 seconds, if not a full minute. But let’s be generous and say it only takes 45 seconds. 45 seconds x 2,220 = 27.75 hours. And let’s suppose that you have to write the article and give it to them, and that submitting that article takes 30 seconds, which is being incredibly generous. That would be another 4.58 hours, meaning these people are promising approximately 32.33 hours of mind-numbing work for $375, or about $11.60/hour.
As they say, this is work that Americans won’t do. So in case point #1 didn’t make it clear, you’re not dealing with people in the US, but hey, I’ve outsourced work to other countries and sometimes I’ve had good results, so I’m not saying outsourcing to India means you’ll get junk back. Junk is junk and American SEO companies can provide junk too, the only difference being they’ll charge you more for it.
3. But here’s the real problem–if these services worked, everyone would be doing it. But I would guess that if you surveyed the 200 leading SEO firms, not a single one is outsourcing their link building to companies like this. If it worked, it’d be great for them. They could charge their clients $20K, do zero work, pay $375, and their clients would be happy and they’d make a bundle of money. Heck, I’d do it, but instead I’m doing the work myself or I’ve got a guy I’m paying $800 per month, per website, for link building services, and I don’t expect to get more than a few links out of this guy per month. The fact is, these types of services don’t get the results that lead to genuine SEO success. That is, they don’t lead to increased numbers of quality incoming links, and therefore they don’t lead to higher rankings, and therefore they don’t lead to increased amounts of traffic. They might submit your site and some articles to article sites, but these aren’t the directories you want to be listed in, nor the article sites you want stuff on. There’s a chance the directories these people are submitting to might even hurt your rankings.
So next time you read a claim that seems too good to be true, think about it a little, and then maybe take your wife out for a nice steak instead.
I think I have one to top your actual company claim – I found an SEO company (ranked highly well, organically I might add – at least at the time of search in Google under Organic SEO…) that not only claims to be able to do the things you just mentioned, but even admitted to outsourcing their optimization professionals! Just so that they could offer their services for just about the same rates asyou listed above.
This of course, brings up the question: “What’s so bad about outsourcing my SEO professionals?” Well, aside from not being able to communicate effectively with the person responsible for your internet presence and budget (wherein one of the most valuable weapons at your disposal is the extremely unique and relative content and links, which I doubt will hold up well in translation…), the entire point of ORGANIC SEO is that it takes hard work and experience in web design to understand the way search engines view your site and continually keep up with the latest optimization techniques (NOT tricks…). So, everything having been said, the optimization of your website is definitely one of those times where you need QUALITY, not QUANTITY, and the entire point of outsourcing work is to get more for less, which as everyone who has lived in western civilization for any given period of time knows, is actually too good to be true. Hopefully you will read these two articles and either decide to do your own search engine optimization or use a company that can better meet your web site needs.
Jon, your comments were badly worded and difficult to follow. And I’m still wondering if you agree with Josh’s point-of-view or are trying to refute it.
Anyway, good article Josh. Thanks.
Thanks for carrying the water for my SEO firm post which has been modified. I tend to post things that work at the time. In 2006-2007 this strategy was a no brainer. I’ve been in the industry to since 1996 and know what a con is. If you have called me that then you really don’t know me at all. So I call what you posted about my services as slander and I resent it.
More what I meant to say… I wanted to upgrade my utahfirms.com posting but the site is temporarily down. I will change my profile once it goes live. As for $375, this price is sometimes called in the industry as a “lost lead” for an action that the potential client can call me to get started with my services. Back in 2006 when I made that profile, the campaign strategy got immediate results.
It is not a con game that I run at SEOgame Inc. I’ve had recurring clients since 1999 that have paid over $1,000 – 1,500 a month to keep them going. I currently have 10 other clients that have been with my services for month after month. As for organic search engine services, I started and keep all my clients and new clients to the top. That is my job along those I employ. However, one egg in the basket isn’t what makes them pay me each month year after year. It’s because relations are all about people and results. Each month I need to renew my monthly contract and achive my goals. I meet one on one with my clients and that’s business. Again, thanks for carry the water for my utahfirms post. It’s been my pleasure to be called a “con”servative SEO strategist here in Utah Valley. Have you ever heard of LinkBaiting?
Also, feel free to ask your friend Paul Allen who I am. I’m hoping he will still vouch for me as a SEO specialist just trying to make it happen for himself and his family and those he employs.
If you don’t like people pointing out overblown claims then don’t make them, or if making them helps bring in the clients and you want to continue the practice then grow a thick skin and don’t get too offended when someone points them out.