Network Solutions is quietly promoting some SEO services I find quite wrong.. After acquiring a domain yesterday, I logged in to change its DNS settings. Directly above my newly acquired name, this promotion caught my eye:
Get top 10 rankings in search engines like Google® and Yahoo®! — Guaranteed!
Now, initially I was saying,”yeah, you can get me top 10 listings within *paid search* on goog and y! by bidding $10 a click.” But they weren’t talking about paid, they’re talking about organic SEO.
“Search engine optimization of your home page and key landing pages. 20 targeted keyword phrases delivering at least 5 listings in the Top 10 results on major search engines”.
Wanna know what they’re most *inexpensive* rate was for the guaranteed package?
$2,800.00 ($5,800 was the most expensive)
after I slapped my forehead, I began to ask, “what do they consider ‘major search engines’?”
their response in fine print:
Network Solutions will only submit keywords to search engines in the United States. The search engines included are: AOL, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Ask.com (formerly known as AskJeeves), Google, Hotbot, IWon, Looksmart, Lycos, MSN, Netscape, and Yahoo!.
then, within the fine print as well, I discovered this doozy:
This service(s) does not guarantee any sales or traffic to your Web site.
So, imagine yourself working at a small business, say a plumbing company in Smyrna GA (the type of business they’re targeting here), where any-and-all marketing and advertising dollars are spent to generate revenue and leads. You’ve heard about all this SEO stuff, and how it can open a flood gate of traffic & sales to your business website, but you have no clue on how its done. Assume you sign up, stars in your eyes, your boss is gonna love you when he sees the latest quarter of sales performance..
According to Netsol, they’ll contractually deliver on their promise if they deliver this:
2 of your website pages appearing in the industry leading seach engine Hotbot, and the other three pages in Lycos, all at 10th position..
so, if you were following along, and imagined yourself working at that small business, you’d be fired right now for blowing $2,800.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 8:12 am and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I totally agree: they are asking for a what is in fact a moderate sum given their promises… “placement in the top 10 results”. No two search queries are alike, so for them to pretend that they can deliver visibility in the top 10 results for both “used catheters” (a non competitive search), and for the sake of argument, “free porn” (a ridiculously competitive search) is straight bastardly.
Good SEO consultants always tell their customers the same thing: quick fixes are always illusions in the long run (and indeed, often in the short run); the safest route is always well written content, full of researched keywords, and an information architecture that is semi-coherent, and spider-able.
Oh… and actually using [h1], [h2] tags, and paying a LOT of attention to your [title] elements are a must. Watch duplicate content on CMSs. Have descriptive URLS, but not TOO descriptive (looks spammy)…
Of course, clients hate hearing that there is no magic fix, but I insist any person who takes money from the uneducated will reiterate these truths as a matter of professionalism, integrity, and genuine desire to be “part of the solution” . Good SEO consultants will refuse to do things in circumstances where they know that its not in their clients best interest, and that their client is being short sighted, and making brash decisions…. (e.g. demanding to pay to be submitted to some spammerific, pyramid scheme, link farm).
Speaking of which, you should really post a direct link to their site. If for no other reason than they should be offered the courtesy of being able to see the direct traffic. I’d love to hear how they attempt to spin their response.