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
-
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 -
Using the same landing page for seo and ppc
When does it make sense to create one landing page for both seo and ppc?
Paid Search Marketing | | melen0 -
What are the strongest and most-Google friendly directories to place my business on for the sake of large SEO gains? for the sake of Exposure to customers? What is the best way to invest for ROI nowadays? Thanks.
I do basic SEO stuff as well as marketing for quite a few clients. But, I am wondering which directories or exposure based groups are worth the money? Is a business.com directory listing for $300 a solid investment to get a strong link? Is yext a good move? How about wildfire? I could use some really high DA links to stack on top of the link profiles I have already built through content, etc.? Please advise me. PS Confession: I was once a pre-panda Fiverr link junkie. But I am in recovery. I have an 18 month chip and am currently making amends. 12 steps to SEO freedom baby.
Paid Search Marketing | | creativeguy0 -
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 -
AdWords *free* vouchers hurt SEO?
Maybe it was the penguin, or maybe it was Panda, but around about the time of the three updates close together and the rumoured 'parked domain' update that went wrong, I used a free adwords voucher. The site in question used to rank for practically every search term relevant to the niche. Now, I can search back to 60 pages in Google results and nothing. Now, I know its not been de-indexed, it still there when I search for info:TheDomainInQuestion.co.uk It also has 6 site links when searching for the url alone. Each and every page is hand written original content built up over many years and also edited and updated regularly. On linkdetective, I have a very nice rainbow type graph regarding the type of links and also a very very good spread of anchors. 118 different phrases pointing in and aside from one site that linked to me sitewide (16000+ but since removed and now down to 3300 and dropping almost daily). Even with that, the highest percentage of anchor text was 20%. Basically, gone through practically everything that is available on the web about combating penguin and panda, yet the site kept dropping and has disappeared completely for keyword phrases. Might sound a bit paranoid, but could Google have done this on purpose to try to make me carry on with adwords?
Paid Search Marketing | | NinJaSkrtel0 -
I need monthly SEO help!
Hello, I'm new here, but a HUGE fan of SEOmoz and their working principles. I need someone who would have the same regard for SEOmoz and a healthy respect for safe SEO principles to help me with my monthly clients. Is this the place to post about my need or should I take it to the jobs area? Thanks in advance for your guidance.
Paid Search Marketing | | kbates1 -
Seo and ads for Baidu (china)
Has anyone have experience doing seo for the baidu search engine? I have a client who wants to target businesses in china so we are exploring options for PPC and SEO. Any ideas or tips would be much appreciated? I was thinking of getting a bi-lingual mini-site made that would catch leads from seo and ads. Can anyone suggest any chinese PPC/seo freelancers?
Paid Search Marketing | | Netboost0 -
Have you seen a correlation in between running a PPC campaing and increased SEO ranking for a new site (< 3 months old)?
I have read many conflicting articles on this topic. I understand that running a PPC campaign at a launch phase of a site can get a lot of insights such as exact traffic patterns etc. But the question is: is there a correlation or not with increased rankings position for new site as search engine are forced to crawled that given landing page to give your ad a score? Thanks in advance for your answers and opinion
Paid Search Marketing | | OlivierChateau0