The internet seems to be ablaze with people wanting to help you and your website or Facebook page look better, I wondered what all the hype was all about. I knew enough about Search Engine Optimization or SEO to know that I knew nothing that would help me out.
See SEO is a term many people think helps them get more customers and that’s it, but in fact, it is more than that as I found out. So, I went on a journey and begun finding out if SEO companies could make a difference to me and my site (www.thebusinessprocrastinator.com).
I set myself two goals.
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- Ask people that know this stuff better than me for their advice.
- Find out if there was a way I could do a lot of it myself without costing a fortune.
And so my journey began.
I started by doing some research through some Facebook groups and coaching sites to find people, I thought might be able to provide me with some good advice or even free and after numerous discussions, I found 5 I used as my control group. I chose these because none of them were local to me (I did not want a face-to-face meeting as I wanted to see if they could operate through the technology they spoke about), and they all offered a free review of my site as an introduction.
So, I took them up on their free review offer.
Two of them were extremely basic and did not really give me any information that was helpful in any way. Change the color of this, resize that, make your domain name smaller, more pictures, use Google Adwords. What the heck?
One other did a similar thing but provided a detailed report which I found very interesting to read. The content was informative and clear and gave me some very good insight into what needed to happen to the site to improve its SEO rank. Speaking of Rank, the other 3 companies offered a report also for me also but they all looked oddly the same, and also it was only a partial report. I had to pay to see the rest. No, what was interesting was the reports they gave me were the same as in the same sort of content, that was to be expected. I mean the same, style, layout, fonts, colors, graphs, images, statements. The same.
This got me to thinking that they were not actually using their own efforts by possibly some third-party software that did it all for them.
After some digging around, I found the following websites that offer snapshot Search Engine Optimization reviews for your site FOR FREE. What’s even more interesting is that one of these sites was where the report from three of these companies had come from.
https://seositecheckup.com/analysis
https://www.ionos.com/website-checker
I had Questions
Being me, I did a quick email back to them and asked, “How do you generate such a detailed report?” and one of them wrote back this to me:
“We have a team of IT professionals, who work with highly advanced software designed in-house, to analyze your site and find the elements that need to be addressed based. This is all based on very sophisticated algorithms and procedures to ensure our services get you the most accurate representation of your site's SEO position as we can.”
Not surprised that this company was blatantly using another site's reports and passing them off as their own, I was surprised by the answer. 100% lies and fabrications and they wanted to charge me $985 for the full detailed report, which I subsequently downloaded from the site for nix.
My Results were interesting
As an example, here is my starting screen from https://www.ionos.com/. The four circles were in one of the reports I received which said they could increase being found by 50 to 80% for $985.00.
Comparatively, here is my screen after I did a few things I knew I could do myself. 14 to 68 increase in “Get Found” is a pretty good result in my books, especially for someone who knows nothing about Search Engine Optimization improvements.
I guess it pays to do a bit of checking of what you are getting and making sure it’s not free somewhere else especially in exactly the same format.
Suggestions to Follow:
Can I suggest asking the following questions before you pay for anything:
- Can I speak with some of your previous customers to get some feedback on your value for service? (Do not take their word for it).
- How are you assessing the SEO status of my site? Ask for a clear and detailed explanation
- What makes you different from other companies that offer the same services?
- Are you open to teaching me how to take care of SEO myself as part of your services? A good company should be willing to show you how to do it yourself.
- Can I have a look at your social media presence, please? Check their accounts and see how long they have been around, where they operate from, and who is connected with them.
A little bit of homework will go a long way to saving you hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
Be careful when speaking to companies. Many offer services you can do yourself. Be open to the ones that discuss things with you, are willing to guide you rather than do it for you and be ready to say no the moment you feel something is off.
After all, in today's world, there will always be someone else out there to help you if you need it.
Ok, you can go now.
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