So I’ll provide a slight back story on dealing with SEO and the companies that “promise the world.”  I currently work for a small to mid-sized company that’s basically top ranked on all of the predominant keywords that we need to target.  We’re not progressive by any means, but we do all of the major things right.  We’re just not out to invest time into something that isn’t even our main focus with the limited budget we can afford.

We understand that the simplicity of it all is that it’s going to take time, it’s going to take work, and above all everything in the SEO world is going to fluctuate. What I ran into today dealing with an SEO company promising to sell the world was laughable at best. It all starts out with the salesperson giving us a call and explaining what exactly SEO(Search Engine Optimization) is. He tells us the ins and outs that we already know off of a canned speech regarding the values and negatives of PPC campaigns.  Shows us where we rank and how we need to focus in certain areas. Now, I’m totally understanding the fact that he can’t/doesn’t want to tell us ways to increase SEO and organic views. That’s on their part to provide the goods, and them telling us the answer cuts them out of the loop.

What became apparent however was that he was more set on just getting us locked into the deal without really even telling us what he can provide/much less do for our site and it’s rankings. The entire conversation was supposed to be built on the trust of the canned powerpoint and speech he gave us, and it simply wasn’t.

I don’t get how this entire thing works. He showed us no actual stats or facts that we can adapt to our actual site. Not to mention that he basically held off any information that would get us to trust him further, or at least think that their company actually knew how to provide accurate results for it’s contracts.

My biggest overall thought is that it’s a shill game. I really do feel bad for the companies that feel they’re forced with no option but to choose the company promising the world. It’s not realistic, it’s not correct, and it’s borderline unethical to me to promise these kinds of results.