After Many SEO Companies...

[Heal3r]

Background first-I've been promoting a financial services company via various channels. Our most significant success has occurred online. We use a variety of PPC and organic search techniques.

And I have hired quite a few SEO companies. A dozen or so, each with their own website and goals. The winners so far have been the little companies. The 2 bigger companies I have worked with WEBDEX and KEYWORDRanking or PRORANKING were busts. After 6 months neither produced acceptable results. I'm not saying they are bad companies, just that they were not successful either delivering targeted traffic (WebDex) or obtaining rankings (ProRanking) for our company. We cancelled both contracts. Both companies were very angry with us, and ProRanking has been threatening to sue. $5000/month and 6 mos of no rankings, and they are mad at us? I think SEO companies have certain strengths and weaknesses where they are successful with some methods and not so with others. The big winner continues to be content. I built a few tiny pages myself, based on all content, and those sites tend to rank higher than some of the expensively optimized sites.

I have narrowed all my trial and error searching down to 2 small companies, who have all our sites ranked very well, using white hat techniques. The winner and still the champion is content, linking, and time.

Whether you do it yourself, or have someone else do the work, I recommend you stick to the basics. It cost probably 30K for me to learn the hard way. If you hire a company, have very measurable benchmarks, and a way out if those bench marks aren't met. There is no reason to not see some progress immediately and significant growth by 4 months. I have also learned in most cases I have to aggressively follow up with the seo company..."What work has been done today? What are the goals for the next 2 weeks? How can I help?" At the end of a few contracts, the seo company would sometimes say, "well, the reason it didn't work is (fill in the blank)" and I had to in more than one situation ask, "why is this the first time I am hearing about this?"
Final thought. Some SEO companies have a "sales" force, and a "tech" force, and a "customer service" force. Our company has found significantly more success with the non-sales force companies. When someones sells you, another person works the site, and another person deals with your issues, who is really caring about your business?

This is just my opinion based on my experiences and told of course, from my point of view. Use what you can, discard the rest.

[bhartzer]

I know some of the folks at WEBDEX. What type of issues did you have with them?

[Heal3r]

I don't want to point out any specific problems. Webdex may be a fine establishment and I have no interest in running them through the wash. The poor results could have been for any number of reasons.
I did want to make a possible distinction between larger and smaller companies, and some advice in the up front discussions of choosing an SEO. I would be willing to share details privately if that would be of some benefit to you.

[pimil]

Jason, I'm sorry to hear about your "financial lessons" in the world of SEO. We at Pimil.com have recognized that many business owners have the same problems as you do and that is why we offer a guarantee to all of our clients: Your website will have a top 3 placement in Google for your specified keyword(s)within twelve weeks or your money back.