Thread: 95% of SEO companies are running a B2B Scam

Dallas, Texas / Most website owners believe that when online sales are poor, they only need to generate more traffic to their website to get more sales. This is what most SEO companies tell businesses.

Generating more traffic to a website that cannot convert the traffic into sales will prove to be costly mistake and unlikely to generate any Return on Investment. Before you hire an SEO company or try to get more traffic to your website, you should first make sure that the site has proven to convert traffic into sales.

95% of the seo companies are only trying to generate traffic to websites and the results are worthless.

Read more 95% of SEO companies are running a B2B Scam

Interesting, but are you considering that 95% of seo companies are worthless?

I agree.....
SEO companies and so called SEO experts only want your money.
All they do is push traffic to a site, and say that is what you paid for.
Why I always say, forget trying to please search engines just for traffic.
Work on your site, and use the hundreds of good ways to drive traffic to your site.
When you are in control of your traffic, you can then get only traffic that would be a good fit for your site/business.

Hmmm, is there a market for doing "Site Content Audits" for companies to check for unauthorized postings by employees/members./etc similar to the software audit field for corporations you think?

This is Marcus Bradley, the author of the quote that started this thread. (For full disclosure, I have no affiliation with Natural Elements. This is not a plug or paid post) I was checking google for back links and found this post so I joined the conversation.

Javanx3d - There is a Market for SEO Audits and some companies are selling them for several hundred dollars. Others are giving them away free.

Here is my concluding thought in the original article that I published:
“Your website should first prove that it can convert the traffic into sales before you ever try to increase your websites traffic”

If your website doesnt convert first, SEO will never do anything for you.

Originally Posted by Natural Elements

Interesting, but are you considering that 95% of seo companies are worthless?

There aren't many SEOs that are able to charge enough for the work to actually make a living. So, what's left for the most part are the scammers and corner-cutters.

You'll notice that most of the big name SEOs now teach instead of providing SEO services.

There is true, there are a lot scams in the seo services business, but you gotta look at it from another perspective as well. Most business site owners have no clue about SEO. Paying for a consultation and a quick review of their site is a good option for them, so they can learn the basics of SEO and get some ideas on how to improve their sites.

Site conversations are unrelated to SEO though, so don't mix up two different things

Originally Posted by Marcus Bradley

Javanx3d - There is a Market for SEO Audits and some companies are selling them for several hundred dollars. Others are giving them away free.

Here is my concluding thought in the original article that I published:
“Your website should first prove that it can convert the traffic into sales before you ever try to increase your websites traffic”

If your website doesnt convert first, SEO will never do anything for you.

The article is interesting, but very biased and a bit misleading. It is a marketing pitch written by a company who is pushing an alternative approach. I see an obvious agenda that may be just as much of a scam as what they accuse others of doing. Based upon what I read, it is obvious that they are going to try to make every SEO project look like a scam.

I fully agree that a lot of SEO companies aren't doing anything worthwhile for the money that they charge. But the legitimate players have never pushed the idea that more traffic is better. They have always promoted the concept of "targeted traffic", which is exactly what the company who wrote the article will do.

A lot of legitimate SEO companies have moved into training in part because it is increasingly difficult to convince a company to spend thousands of dollars on SEO work with no guarantee of success. There is also a legal liability if an SEO does try to offer guarantees. It is much easier to train corporate web development teams how to use proper SEO techniques than it is to fix a web site that was horribly designed from the beginning by the same team. Most corporations have budgets for training, while SEO projects generally have to be approved as a special project.

Given all of the changes with Google over the past several years, no one can legitimately offer guarantees. That does leave much of the market to the scammers who prey on naive web site owners.

Originally Posted by DomainMagnate

Site conversations are unrelated to SEO though, so don't mix up two different things

An excellent point. There is an old saying that goes, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Even with targeted traffic, the problem with conversions is frequently one of a poor product presentation or a mix of products that just don't sell well. There is also the issue of the recession. We see a lot of web sites where the targeted traffic is steady or increasing, but the sales are declining because people are hesitant to spend money.

Originally Posted by Marcus Bradley

This is Marcus Bradley, the author of the quote that started this thread. (For full disclosure, I have no affiliation with Natural Elements. This is not a plug or paid post) I was checking google for back links and found this post so I joined the conversation.

Javanx3d - There is a Market for SEO Audits and some companies are selling them for several hundred dollars. Others are giving them away free.

Here is my concluding thought in the original article that I published:
“Your website should first prove that it can convert the traffic into sales before you ever try to increase your websites traffic”

If your website doesnt convert first, SEO will never do anything for you.

Thank you so much Marcus to post, I found your article very interesting. I was one of them when I started Natural Elements with my wife to think that generating more traffic will convert into sales, and that's not what happened. These days the approach need to be more precise and analytical.

Back to the topic, I found very true that many SEO companies are running B2B scam, and it could cost much more than the payment to these companies, it could cost you your business. Most of them will use unethical techniques that may ban you from search engines.

Lessons learned, we are doing the SEO and the marketing ourselves the best of our abilities.

Originally Posted by Natural Elements

I found very true that many SEO companies are running B2B scam, and it could cost much more than the payment to these companies, it could cost you your business. Most of them will use unethical techniques that may ban you from search engines.

While it is true than many SEO companies are running a scam, there isn't any evidence that most are using unethical techniques unless you are specifically referring to the many companies who are scammers. Anyone who refuses to tell clients what they are doing or cites "proprietary techniques" is probably using black hat SEO or running a scam.

The biggest problem that I see over and over is with the companies that charge hundreds of dollars each month for SEO services, do nothing to a optimize a client's web site and at best set up a few weak links to the client's site. I've been involved with SEO for 14 years. I put the percentage of scammers at around 60%. It certainly is not 95%. There are a lot of companies who do a good job and are strictly white hat.

Personally, I would not trust the people who wrote the article. That in itself appears to be a scam.

Originally Posted by TopDogger

While it is true than many SEO companies are running a scam, there isn't any evidence that most are using unethical techniques unless you are specifically referring to the many companies who are scammers.

Well, I prefered to say many instead of putting down a specific number. But I can tell you from my personal experience that all SEO companies I contacted the two first years I was in business, never planned to work on my site. All of their work were limited and they were willing to optimize only a few keywords/keyphrases, that's it.

As a young entrepreneur, the only SEO company I hired unfortunately put me in the throat 1 year contract and the work used was spamming black hat seo techniques from the 80's with poor results.

Hey we all make mistakes and this is why it is important to let newbies know what traps not to fall into.