Search engine placement scam
 

Today someone called me from a search engine placement company offering an organic submission of my website in first pages of best known search engines. I decided to give a person a shot and listen to what they offer.

Basically he said that they pick one company from entire area (in my case it is NYC and keyword VIDEOGRAPHY SERVICES) and push it all the way up to the first page of google, yahoo, bing e.t.c next to biggest players of my local market.

To make a long story short, they'd waisted an hour of my time, transferred me to 3 different people (Mark, Joseph and Benjamin) and only at the end of an hour I was able to find out the quote ($2750.00 for 6 months submission).

To good to be truth, and I have requested to do my own research about them and get back to them when I will make my mind. And that is when I ended up being transferred to Benjamin who sounded very inpatient and pushy, trying to convince me to go ahead and start the payment process. He started to get nervous and scream on me, when I said that I am not willing to deal with them at the moment.

Well, sometimes I can't understand people and that was one of the cases. Neither I wanted to pay, neither to hurt a salesperson's feelings who was doing his job, but eventually I had to advise him to go for a long erotic trip with himself. Of course after he warned me to call to immigration service (probably because of my russian accent or something, any way it was a pretty stupid and pointless attempt).

Over all I just want to warn people who are getting calls from organic search engine submitters who sound too good to be real. At least google the name of the company and you will find a lot of interesting info that will help you to make a right investment and do not get scammed.

I got a call from them, too. The were very nice and polite at first, but when you start asking how much it is going to cost, they won't give you a straight answer. I was almost an hour on the phone. I told this guy I was already first page for some keywords and that I would only consider it if it was not expensive. So I asked the price and that's when they said $2700!! for six months! As soon as I said that "I'll not consider it" ... they hung up.
I have received other calls from SEO people, but never this unprofessional.
Watch out with this people!

When it comes to Google search results, there is no way to cheat the system. In the event that you do something like having your site added to a "link farm", they will then penalise your site ranking to the point that you drop out of the results.

My advice? Don't give them a cent.

Also, if someone can't give you the message within the first minute of the phone call, then something is wrong - either they don't know what they are on about, or it's a dodgy sales call.

Andrew

They called me too
 

I just wanted to let you know that these companies are still around. I just spent an hour on the phone after a cold call. Excellent presentation, but steep price. They almost wouldn't take no for an answer. Very high pressure and urgency. I don't do business that way.

You guys are way more patient than me. I simply assume every cold call is a scam and hang up on them. My life is much easier that way.