Just Had An Interesting Conversation With A Customer,, I'm expecting a call from the snakeoil salesman any minute... Options

[rolf]

Just had an interesting conversation with a customer, who in turn has had a call from someone 'guaranteeing 1st page placement in Google'.

I'm sure I don't need to go into any details for the gist of the conversation to be apparent from the little information I've given, anyway I'm pleased to say that my customer smelled a rat and told the caller he would need to speak to his IT guy (that's me) before making a decision.

I told my customer that, although there was some truth in much of they've told him, it sounds to me like they've chosen to reveal only half the facts in a bid to paint a misleading picture.

So, anyway, he asked if he could get them to call me to discuss it, which I encouraged him to do as I'm intrigued to see what they say.

Finally getting to the point (hoorah!), they told him that for a very relevant search term (county-X service-X) there are 3000 searches a month, and they would guarantee him a first page placement for that term. I know there are tools with which you can do comparative numbers, but are there any which will say definitively that there are 3000 searches per month in Google for phrase X?

Aside from anything, the numbers seem far too high to me. I could believe that there might be 3000 searches for all permutations of all phrases that mean the same thing, but 3000 per month for the one term sound suspiciously high to me. Additionally, if it turns out there really are 3000 per month for the one phrase, I would imagine that it's so competitive there would be no way to get onto the front page within a month or two without using some questionable tactics.

[Jill]

No, there's no definitive tools. They're probably using the old over-inflated Overture numbers.

[Randy]

Adwords impressions data could probably get you in the ballpark.

But like you I think such a number for a long tail phrase as you've indicated sure sounds inflated. Jill's right. That does sound like some of the stuff seen in the Overture tool over the years. Who knows, they may have done the automated searches themselves to bump the number up for that phrase. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol.gif)

[BBCoach]

I don't put a lot of stock in Google Trends, but it's an interesting exercise to compare phrases for free. Most of the phrases I've tested ring true, but the numbers reported sometimes seem off. It is still in the Lab phase and it will get you to thinking of one keyword usage versus one another. Try it with those phrases they said they can get ranked and see what it says. It'd be interesting to report that info back here.

[rolf]

Still no call - maybe they don't want to talk to someone who might understand how they're doing it?

My customer forwarded an email they sent him with some key phrases they were suggesting they could get him on the front page for - not one of them came back with any results either in Overture or in Google Trends...

Also, the email had their web address so I checked out their site, which has no mention of how they plan to deliver on their promises. Obviously they're not going to give away the details of exactly how they're doing it, but I would think someone legit would at least give a broad idea, such as optimising the site and getting links - or some other general details of their approach.

Further to this, I've checked out their contract. You know how sometimes people give away what they expect to happen by what they write in their contract? Well there is a clause in their contract that says the customer indemnifies them against any losses arising from damage to their office or their equipment caused by said customer - now why would their customers want to damage any of their equipment? LMAO

There's some other shocking stuff in their contract, that in my opinion amounts to saying "we make no guarantees so if we don't do a good job, or even if we cost you money, you can fire us but you can't have your money back or any compensation"

So all in all, don't bother to lend me your barge pole, I won't be needing it.

[RiYo]

"we make no guarantees so if we don't do a good job, or even if we cost you money, you can fire us but you can't have your money back or any compensation"

Fantastic (IMG:style_emoticons/default/girl_cray2.gif) this is one I need to ad to my contract as well. LOL

Richard

[rolf]

Just had a call from the company, quite an interesting conversation.

I can't tell if they told me something slightly different from what they told my customer, however, something that was revealed after a few minutes is that they're not selling organic placement, but placement at the top of the page in the sponsored results - this, of course, adds a whole different dimension to the situation.

As I understand it, the sponsored links above the organic results are PPC just like the PPC on the right hand side - please correct me if I'm wrong. The sales rep from this company told me that they pay £xxx,xxx per month to Google, who guarantee x number of slots in these ads for any keyphrases they choose. This is not PPC and the customer pays £20 per month per keyword, regardless of whether it gets 1 click or 1,000,000 clicks.

After the first month (which has a compulsory number of 5 keyphrases) Google issues metrics and the customer can view these to decide if they want more, less or even no keyword adverts at all for the following month(s)

If this is true, then I could see it being a useful thing, although I've not previously heard of this so I've still got my skeptical hat on.

I've asked the rep to email me with some metrics for their suggested keyphrases, specifically how many people have searched for those phrases for the last few months. I've also asked her to include some qualitative evidence for the data so that I can see where they got their numbers from (e.g. was it direct from G, or from Overture, or some other source.) She agreed to email me with this info before the end of today.

Any thoughts on whats been said so far would be very helpful to my forming an opinion on this situation.

Cheers.

[scouseflip]

Hi Rolf

Just had a call from the company, quite an interesting conversation.

I can't tell if they told me something slightly different from what they told my customer, however, something that was revealed after a few minutes is that they're not selling organic placement, but placement at the top of the page in the sponsored results - this, of course, adds a whole different dimension to the situation.

As I understand it, the sponsored links above the organic results are PPC just like the PPC on the right hand side - please correct me if I'm wrong.

That's my understanding as well and I may be wrong but as I understood it, placement in the links above the organic results can not be guarenteed either as they are dependant upon a high enough 'quality score'.

The sales rep from this company told me that they pay £xxx,xxx per month to Google, who guarantee x number of slots in these ads for any keyphrases they choose. This is not PPC and the customer pays £20 per month per keyword, regardless of whether it gets 1 click or 1,000,000 clicks.

...

If this is true, then I could see it being a useful thing, although I've not previously heard of this so I've still got my skeptical hat on.

Never heard of this and sounds highly unlikely to me too but I'd be interested if anyone knew otherwise!

Cheers

[Jill]

Sounds like they are simply repackaging Google AdWords. They pay a certain amount per click and have a specific budget set, then charge the customer a certain percentage over what they're actually paying so that they make a profit.

It's not necessarily bad, but it would depend on your ultimate conversions of course and whether or not you just wanted to manage your Adwords yourself. (Or have it managed via a different model.)

[rolf]

I'd be interested if anyone knew otherwise

Me too! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol.gif) I'll post on this thread if I find out anything conclusive.

Sounds like they are simply repackaging Google AdWords

Yes, that's what it sounds like to me too, which is not a bad thing in itself.

If they were being honest about that then I wouldn't have a problem with it, but they've specifically told me (and my customer) that this is not PPC and they pay Google a fixed amount for a fixed number of guaranteed slots, which is why they can guarantee them to my customer. From what I've read in the last hour, an expert running a PPC campaign cannot guarantee those top placements will even appear, let alone whether a particular ad will be in them - whatever the situation is, both things cannot be true.

Seems to me that the only thing you can be certain of with a company who are outrightly deceptive in your first conversation with them is that they are a deceptive company and cannot be trusted.

It also seems that there are a number of other companies doing adwords for these terms, so I have to ask the question - if the company in question can make a profit charging £20 per keyword, how much can they be bidding per click? And how many clickthroughs is the phrase likely to get? They're surely not going to chance paying more than it's costing them, so there is a worrying discrepancy somewhere.

On a slightly different but related note, I've done nothing more than a single page 'business card on the web' type site for this customer, with no SEO apart from using relevant phrases in the very brief copy and making the page search friendly. This page is showing up on the first page for 3 of the suggested phrases, page 2 for one of them, and nowhere for one phrase that uses a word not mentioned on the page, but is getting no traffic from any of them. There's also half a dozen other highly targeted page 1 phrases that are bringing in 1 to 5 visitors per month. It makes me wonder how hard it would be to get to the top placement for each of these phrases without much more work - I suspect it wouldn't be very hard at all.

Thanks for your feedback

[shimlad]

One of my customers had the exact same call! - perhaps you could pm me the company website? could be the same one!

Anyway i concluded that all they were doing was taking £20 a month from the customers and spending £10 a month on googel adwords!

Clever! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/notworthy.gif)

[shimlad]

just to put a cap on this - it was the same company that contact both rolfs client and mine.