Quickseoresults.com - Anyone used them?

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Has anyone had any experience with or used quickseoresults.com? I'm just looking into them now. They seem to offer a 30 day free trial based on 'white hat' tactics that gives results. You can then pay to continue their services. They seem to base their services heavily around link building, so I'm dubious.

[kpaulin]

Here are ten key questions (and some guideline answers) that you should put to a prospective SEO company plus some questions they should be asking you too...

• **What do you think about my site’s technical structure, on-page and off-page content and link profile? **Ask them to make some observations about these three key SEO factors that influence Search Engine visibility in relation to your site, especially link building.
• **What kind of changes will be required to your website and will they be noticeable?**You should expect them to talk about on-page and off-page changes. On-page will require the subtle inclusion of the targeted keyword phrases in various locations on each page, off-page will require changes to your meta data such as your title tag and meta descriptions
• **I know that developing an incoming link profile is important, how will you develop additional links to my site? **You should be looking for them to talk about quality of links as well as quantity and a balanced link profile including free and paid directories, local websites, government or educational institutions, your suppliers etc
• **Can you show me examples of your work? **Don’t bother with references, no one will provide you with a bad one. You just want to see that they can point to current examples of their successes – short competitive keyword phrases such as “computer repairs” rather than “computer repairs for left handed plumbers”
• **What volume of traffic increase is it reasonable to expect and over what time frame?**There are a lot of factors to consider here but assuming your site is technically sound and has quality original content you should expect a 50-100% increase in quality traffic within about three months and potentially much more if your site is languishing
• **What keyword phrases do you think should be targeted for my website? **Not easy during an initial discussion but they should be able to identify the core keywords for your industry and let you know how competitive the segment is. They should discuss geographic considerations and talk about the “money” keywords such as buy, find, deals, get, compare, best, cheap or luxury
• **How many people on your team? **This just allows you to understand whether you are dealing with a small, medium or large SEO firm. Each has it’s strengths and weaknesses. Small or one-person firms can be great but may get busy with other more lucrative clients or they may struggle to keep up with the latest trends. Large firms can be like a sausage factory, churning out SEO in bulk.
• **Who will be working on the assignment? **Often you may be speaking to a Business Development person or the company principal. They should be experts and probably are, but once you have signed up, you should expect to be dealing with a qualified SEO expert with at least three years SEO experience
• **How long have you been doing SEO? **This is a general fact finding question but you might be surprised at the answers you receive and the way they answer. If it is less than three years, keep shopping around.
• **Amongst all the SEO companies out there, in one minute, why should you choose them?**This is giving them the chance for their “elevator pitch”. If they can’t confidently answer this, move on…and you would be surprised how many will stumble at this question.

Naturally, you should also ask them how much, for how long and whether there are any long term contractual obligations. You should also ask for a written proposal that clearly states every action and initiative that they will be undertaking.

A smart SEO representative should also be asking YOU some questions. This enables them to evaluate you as a client. The very best SEO companies are busy and can afford to be selective when determining how reasonable your expectations are and how easy you will be to work with…SEO requires a partnership between client and provider to get the best results.

• What are some of the keywords you would like to turn up for?
• Who do you see as your major competitors, online and offline?
• How old is your URL?
• Do you have a Content Management System (CMS) to edit your site content?
• Have you conducted any SEO activities before?
• Are you using Pay-per-click advertising?
• What do you expect from your SEO investment and over what time frame?
• Can you provide access to your web stats or Google Analytics account?
• Do you have any other URL’s or websites?
• What other marketing initiatives do you undertake, online and offline?

If they start asking you these kind of questions then you know you are well on the way to choosing your SEO provider.

Hope that helps...

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Yes, I remember seeing that! Someone had made a comment about it (obviously I'm spending far too long in the forum!)

[KeriMorgret]

No worries! Associates and staff don't show up on the top users list anyway. Besides, I can always endorse my own answers if I want to really increase my score! (I've actually done that in one instance when there was a long thread and needed to get my answer that something was fixed to the top of the thread).

[PeterAlexLeigh]

PS I would give you a Good Answer, but I've reached my 3 limit for this thread!

Not that it should really matter to an associate - but I've seen your excited tweets in the past about reaching x number of MozPoints!

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Nice bit of investigation Keri - thanks for that!

Their practices looked a bit dubious to me (ie. the forum links and blog posts), but that facebook comment doesn't exactly help their cause!

Think I'll stay clear.

Got anyone you can recommend?

[KeriMorgret]

I'm looking at their Our Method page at http://www.quickseoresults.com/our-method.php. It looks like their method focuses exclusively on link building. They brag about how many PR6-9 sites they get your links on, but this is an interesting paragraph they add:

If you are familiar with even basic SEO, you would know that it is useless to get links from a page with hundreds of outbound links but it’s not useless to get low value or no-follow links because they help construct an organic looking link profile. In the eyes of Google - less manufactured + less commercial = better rankings.

Their services include: wordpress blog posts, social profiles, forum links, web 2.0 blog posts (and this differs from wordpress blog posts how??), blog comments, bookmarking, monthly reporting, and SEO tips for your site.

Their facebook page has over 31,000 likes. The administrator of the facebook page asked for people to respond to a question recently, and in the comments said "So there are still real humans here :D" which doesn't lend confidence to me that all of those likes are very natural.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Yes, we do have craigslist, but to be honest I've never used it. I'll check it out.

Thanks again

[eTundra]

Do you have Craigslist in the U.K.?  Either that or whatever the equivalent would be.  All you need is someone who can write good content (and these people are a dime a dozen) and then show them a few basic content marketing strategies and let them run wild.

If you're looking for something professional, Ian Laurie's Portent Interactive would be a good choice.  He's a regular contributor to SEOMoz's blog and I saw him speak at MozCon but haven't dealt with him professionally or anything.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

ha, it's an actual photo.

ok, thanks for the pointers.

Know any good copywriters?

[eTundra]

BTW, LOVE your profile pic

[eTundra]

There are many great articles on SEOMoz's blog (try typing "content marketing" into the search) by people much smarter than me that you can check out, but here are a few places to start:

1. Curate content from around the web and then add your own into one central resource about your niche then solicit links from all the relevant blogs/websites you can think of.
2. Guest blog
3. Do press releases
4. Create infographics
5. Participate in niche forums/Quora and link back to your content when answering questions

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Sounds like a good strategy; never really considered copywriters before, so I'll investigate.

How would you go about 'marketing the hell out of it'?

[eTundra]

For whatever those guys are charging pay an ambitious copywriter to write a ridiculous amount of content about your niche and then market the hell out of it...  Good copywriting isn't as expensive as you might think and even if you don't get links you'll be ahead of the game on the content side.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

haha, yes, that's a fair point, taken.

I'm essentially looking to get some high quality links, but my time is limited, hence looking for other options. But as you say and I agree, this may not be the place to go!

Thanks for the wake up call!

[eTundra]

Without doing any research at all into "quickseoresults.com" all I can say is their name alone raises a few red flags: SEO is never quick and results is a very subjective term.  These guys may provide an amazing service for all I know but my experience has been that companies with names like this tend to take advantage of websites who don't know much about SEO and therefore get away with charging an arm and a leg for some pretty basic and/or dubious SEO work.

Think about what the top SEO firms call themselves: Majestic, Distilled, Raven, SlingShot... nothing in there about quick results, fast rankings, overnight success, etc.

All I'm trying to say is that these guys sound like they are marketing to people with a much lower SEO IQ than your average PRO member, and you might be better off reading the Beginner's Guide To SEO... which I'm sure you've already done.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

They've got a few examples on their site of clients they'd helped, but I hadn't thought about checking the Whois, so I shall do that.

Also, it's hard to determine what links they may have added and what links the site owners have added via. other methods.

I'll do some more investigation

Thanks

[ResslerMotors]

7. And ask which keywords the website is trying to rank for, and check to see if it is.

[ResslerMotors]

Ask for an example of a website they've worked on, and do an SEO background check on it.

1. Open Site Explorer to check links
2. Who Is to make sure they don't own it
3. Basics of SEO (Title, H1, etc)
4. Site:domain.com to check for indexing problems
5. Check out the 404 page (domain.com/anylongstringofletters)
6. Ask for references