Pay for Performance SEO
-
Does anyone have any thoughts on, or experience with, pay for performance SEO companies such as Results First?
Thanks
-
Be careful with anyone who does pay for performance that they are doing white hat seo - look at work they have done for others thru yahoo site explorer and ask for references- you dont want to wake up one day and see you have been penalized by google
-
doesn't surprise me one bit.
-
Thank you for your excellent analysis. When I spoke with one of their representatives I had a feeling that I was on an outsourced phone bank.
Don
-
Without having direct experience with RestultFirst, I can't speak to their ability to obtain results, however a careful review of their site points out several serious concerns.
1. They carry a "Best in Search" "badge" from TOPSEOs. TOPSEOs sells badges for a price, they do not award these based on actual proven or independently verifiable success.
2. The site is chock full of grammatical flaws, the type of which generally come from outsourced solution providers where Americanized English is not the native language. It's actually quite poor when reading content in its entirety.
3. The claim of "white hat" SEO actually appears to be misleading at best. They describe in their services section, how they provide content - if the content they provide is written as poorly on a client's site as it is on their own, this itself would be a turn-off to many would-be clients or customers. It's highly unprofessional. So even if they could get a site ranked, there's just as much likelihood that many of those visits would be lost before conversion to clients or customers.
They then go on to state:
"the product & services of the client are made popular on social networking site and else, so as to spread the word of the brand. Numerous articles with targeted keywords are submitted on the submission directories which act as a link to the client’s site and this is another of the steps taken by the SEO Services Company to help attain a higher rank on the search engines.'
Ignoring the poor writing, they come right out and say that their primary link building method is what is actually considered a very low quality method of obtaining links, not high value nor SEO best practices.
In one of their "case studies", they state:
"In less than a month’s time, the website achieved rankings in the top 2 pages for keywords". Honestly, if the best they could do was get a site into the 2nd page of Google, that's not very good. And it's another validation to me, in my experience, that they don't really do high end work, but "just enough low quality methods" to get a site "sort of" ranked.
Now, they very well could do much more than I was able to ascertain, or than they claim on their site. They could even implement best practices, and not just "questionable" tactics. There's no way to know from their site however. And nothing on the site indicates they do truly high quality, long-lasting work that isn't in the "gray-hat" arena.
So - exactly what is their promise? How much does it cost? What does the guarantee specify, and what are the loop-holes in that regarding the possibility that some of the tactics they use might eventually fail due to search engines devaluing low quality methods?
Many questions need to be asked, and much written documentation would need to be presented for anyone to ever truly have the knowledge based confidence to want to hire them.
So please - be very cautious if you choose to proceed.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Looking for a competent SEO firm or consultant
Hello Folks, I run an eCommerce site for video surveillance equipment. We used to be on top of page one for related terms until about a year ago and now we are in page 2 or 3. We have 2 in house full time web developers and I have tried 3 different SEO firms with very poor results. I am looking for a competent SEO firm or consultant with proven & verifiable track record. If you or someone you know has used an SEO firm or consultant with good results, I would appreciate if you could point me to them. Thank You!
Paid Search Marketing | | 9Studios0 -
What is the SEO value of Thomasnet
Ok, the company I work for has had a paid listing on Thomasnet.com. This was started long before I took over the marketing. We get no real value from Thomasnet, just a lot of solicitation for unrelated things. And my company has been paying $15,000 a year for this listing. Thomasnet is a huge waste of money and I want to cancel it. The problem is that I do not have a good understanding of the link value from Thomasnet. They have a high domain authority and we have a good number of links from them because we pay for the listing. If we stop paying, those links go away and I am afraid it will hurt us in our rankings. Any insights? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | dloeschen0 -
Adwords account suspended for talking about SEO. Why isn't Moz suspended, too?
First let me say that we don't care that much about Adwords. We were spending about 20 bucks a month and we never optimized it, tinkered with it, or cared that much. Business is booming for us just with organic search and referrals from happy customers. (We're a blog writing service called BlogMutt. Motto: We work like a dog to fill up your blog.) But we just got suspended from Adwords. After multiple inquiries and multiple unhelpful responses, we got a note that said: "Please note that your website contains matter which states your site's SEO increases. Anything which relates to SEO is not allowed as per Google Policies. Please make appropriate changes to your website." Now, we don't say your site's SEO increases with BlogMutt. What we do say is what everyone says, that blogging is a best practice for any modern marketing effort. We certainly are less clear about improving search rankings than, for example, moz.com. Why is it OK for Moz, but not for us? Don't get me wrong. I think Moz should be able to continue advertising. I'm just wondering how we got into the Adwords crosshairs. Any thoughts?
Paid Search Marketing | | scodtt0 -
SEO Certifications? What is good/recommended? Is it still relevant?
Hi All, I'd really like to up my expert game in the SEO/PPC/Web Optimization game and I'd really like to get some strong credentials. So, I'm looking for some legit certifications. Of course, besides Google Analytics/Adwords Certs, is there anything else people here recommend? Is SEMPO still relevant? Check these out: http://www.sempo.org/events/event_details.asp?id=298553 http://www.instantetraining.com/online-marketing-workshop/coached/seo-training Let me know what you think! Thank you. Cheers,
Paid Search Marketing | | CSawatzky
Pedram0 -
Will PPC elsewhere on my domain help my organic SEO?
I have an e-commerce site with a small product line which an on-going organic SEO campaign. As a side project, I'm planning on doing some PPC testing with a highly converting product squeeze page, which I'll run Google ads to gain traffic. (this is PPC only and for this page I am not concerned with organic SEO traffic - although of course the page itself will be fully optimized). I am wondering whether to run this squeeze page on a sub-domain or sub-directory of the existing site, OR to host it on a completely fresh domain? I would like to know if as side-effect my existing Website benefit 'organically' from some of the PPC traffic, helping with it's domain authority, etc.,? or could this possibly do any harm? p.s. Bear in mind this is not going to be a page visible on the on the main site itself, it's a separate entity for PPC. Would be great to have some expert Moz eyes on this and opinions. Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | GregDixson0 -
What are the most Important Local Business Directories for SEO
Thanks for any help on this, I wanted to know what are the most Important Local Business Directories for SEO? I have come a crossed a few sites that list tons of directories, but I wanted to know if anyone here is a top list. Also can it hurt to be on to many?
Paid Search Marketing | | quailadv0 -
What are the best ways that PPC and SEO can work together?
This has come up recently internally as we are an agency that traditionally only focuses on SEO. However, when asked to articulate the benefits of how they can work together I normally see rather vague and non-actionable answers that don't really translate to real life always. I can understand how you can use SEO techniques to improve the ROAS of a PPC campaign by improving the quality of a landing page. I am also aware of a number of ways you can use Adwords data from your campaign to improve your SEO campaign but I am curious to know. How else can the two channels work together to help each other out?
Paid Search Marketing | | SearchAcademy0 -
Does anyone do SEO for a % of sales?
I am the CEO of a small company ( 33 employees in Jacksonville, FL ) We have a family of websites that sell office products - we are the manufacture we have a staff of 3 in the website dept - but with 10 active sites its alot of work. We are launching a new site this week and need to do some SEO for the site .. Since this new site has no sales - i want to see if there is someone that will work based on a % of sales - say 10% of sales for 18 months - Here are my thoughts : Option A: - go out and get a "package" for say $5000 and have SEO done and hope it proves results Option B: - partner with someone and give them 10% of sales the site produces - so if we can grow it to $1M in sales - that person could make $100K off the site - ( our competition is a $20M + site) Some would say that im crazy and it might cost me $100K -i like it because we are all on the same page and i pay for results - not promises. Thoughts?
Paid Search Marketing | | BryanCroft1