7 replies to this topic

[delux]

Last year my company signed a one year agreement with a large internet marketing firm to handle our SEO. We were hoping to cover ourselves and make a lot of progress by going with a reputable firm. After working with them for a year and becoming more familiar with SEO myself over the year, I would probably classify their skillset as being able to get a website search engine ready rather than really doing any optimization or marketing. I had come to grips with the fact that we probably didn't get our full value out of the year long contract, but they got us moving in the right direction so the process wasn't a total loss.

As part of our contract they provide a monthly report that has a static keyword list and shows where those keywords are ranked on all the major search engines. They also summarize how many top 1, 5, 10, 20, and 30 rankings those keywords have so that we can track the progress. After several month's of slow but steady progress, this month's report showed that we increased the number of keywords ranking in the top 1, 5, etc. and in most cases doubling. The ranking summary was accompanied with this explanation talking about how the change occured because of the way the search engines incorporate link popularity.

I was so excited with the progress that I took the previous months keyword ranking report and lined it up with the current months report to see which keywords jumped up. What did I find? Our June report had 6 new branded keyword phrases that they just pulled out of thin air. Really obscure keyword phrases too. Ones that might get one search per year if we were lucky. All of our new rankings came from those words and actually seemed to try to cover up a slight drop overall in our month to month rankings.

Total bush-league move as far as I'm concerned. Not sure if I should call them on it or just play dumb and see what other doody they try to feed me. Feel free to chime in. Right now I'm leaning towards an extremely sarcastic email praising them on their great job.

Anyway thanks to Jill and all of you who post really great information on this forum. You've really helped me manage this relationship over the year as I've probably had to do most of the actual search engine marketing myself.

[adybee]

Not sure if I should call them on it or just play dumb and see what other doody they try to feed me. Feel free to chime in. Right now I'm leaning towards an extremely sarcastic email praising them on their great job.

Give 'em a ring ask them to send you a report showing what difference they have made traffic wise for your key terms. Track these against your leads / sales for the same period. Then you will have some idea of the ROI you're getting from your SEO campaign. If they are delivering a lot more traffic for your main keywords then they are doing a good job - if they are delivering traffic and it's not converting then you're not doing your job - and the site needs checking. That's the real metric you should be looking at - ranking isn't really that important. Saying that if you are getting found for relatively obscure terms at least the site is part optimised

[qwerty]

If they're using rankings as a measure of the success of the campaign, there's really not much point to start with. Are you at least getting traffic from the keywords they're reporting on -- the old ones or the one's they've snuck into the report? How's your overall traffic? How are your conversions? And is the work they've done earned you more money than you've paid them?

[Michael Martinez]

An SEO firm should be making adjustments to a non-performing campaign by recommending new copy, copy changes, working on link placements, etc. throughout the year. Clients don't always implement changes, but before anyone does anything some keyword research should be performed. Clients usually do not know all keywords that produce traffic.

I agree that you should sit down and discuss the new keywords with the SEO. If they made a legitimate change it should have a good business case behind it. Their communication of that change could have been handled better, in any event.

[nethy]

We were hoping to cover ourselves and make a lot of progress by going with a reputable firm

There is the problem. In my experience large reputable firms often gain that reputation from web designing or regestiring web domainsetc and the largeness from being able to sell a service that the buyer does not understand. that is the frustrating
thing about this biz. Clients cannot gauge what they are buying. large companies selling SEO for $100 per month provide (at best) some automated reports & maybe automated directory submissions. Now go and explain to a client that what you do is different and that his giant company is selling them crap. We a have had potential clients go shopping for quotes and then abuse us for grossly overcharging. we try to explain that what they can get from the cheapo mamoth ill gladly give them for free but You can't blame them for not being able to make clever purchase desicions about things they don't understand.

The really depressing thing is this. I bet most of their other clents have no idea that they are being duped and will happily pay the invoice for years.


As for advice, any firm that takes your eye of the prize (traffic & conversions) is probably ripping you off.

[projectphp]

I don't really see the need for monthly reports, but if you do get them, a nice, neatly formatted status report that you can hand to higher ups might be all some people want.

I once had close to 40 clients on a scheme like that, and some wanted actual consulting (changes, reviews etc), some wanted just reports and others didn't care (either they inherited th account or just didn;t care). A good SEO provides their client with what they uniquely want, not some pre-set, structured idea of what is "right".

Now go and explain to a client that what you do is different and that his giant company is selling them crap. We a have had potential clients go shopping for quotes and then abuse us for grossly overcharging

If you can't explain why you are better than someone a lot cheaper, the problem then is your sales technique. That sort of objection is pretty trivial to addres, in my experience.

[netidme]

I've had a bad experience last year with seo - basically, my IT support company offered to design a new site for me (they were not expert web designers but at that point i didnt realise this) I then asked if they did SEO, which the answer was yes! of course we do. I then paid for 6 months after which time, I started to learn web design myself as it was very frustrating asking for minor changes and updates. When i started to learn i realised just how badly the site was designed - with frames, and poor navigation - all new to me. I then stated learning the basics of SEO - by coming to the forums and checking out the excellent newsletters etc. I then realised that their SEO advice was about 10 years out of date - meta tag stuffing, duplicate titles etc. Suffice to say, I cancelled the contract, got my site redesigned properly using CSS. I then started working with a real good SEO expert - who lives and breathes the subject - he has made a huge difference, plus I am learning from him - I no longer want to be in the dark about it. I will always outsource my SEO, as I will never know enough - I guess you good SEO guys must live it 16 hours a day at least! Anyway, sorry for rambling, my point is - always be wary of the 'jack of all trade' types - as they will never be the experts. I'm sure there are loads of IT support companies who have 1 guy who can 'do websites' and they then start to farm him out to their clients as a seo friendly web designer...

[Jill]

I would definitely discuss the discrepancy of the reports with them. Perhaps there's a logical explanation you are overlooking. Perhaps not, but either way, you're paying for a service and it doesn't make any sense to allow them to send you information that doesn't make sense or wasn't part of your original contract.

Ignoring it, or telling them it's fine doesn't seem very professional and won't allow you to get what you really need done.

That said, I'd love for you to pm me the name of the company!