Jaimie Dobson Internet Consultant

One of our web hosting clients emailed me today saying that he’d received a cold called from a search engine marketing company promising to get his website listed on page 1 of Google’s search results pages (SERPS) for “only” £75 per month.

The client wanted to know if it was a “good deal” or a complete rip off. So I asked him to forward their proposal to me for comment.

This was an interesting exercise on two fronts. Firstly, because I was happy to give our client some honest advice with a view to helping him out: if I thought it was a good deal they were offering, I’d tell him. Secondly it allowed me to arm myself with more information about our SEO competitors with respect to how they package and present their services and their prices.

On the face of it, £75 a month for a first page listing of a website on Google sounds a good deal. After all 80% of UK searchers use Google and everyone knows that if a site isn’t on page 1 of Google’s SERPS it has a significantly reduced chance of being found and visited. So surely getting on the first page is good and £75 per month isn’t really that much is it?

Hang on a mo’ though before everyone gets carried away! Let’s dig a little deeper here and see what these guys are actually offering. Experience has taught me that “good deals” like this inevitably fall-short of what the client expects from the arrangement in the long term by which time their money has been wasted.

I examined the client’s forwarded proposal which consisted of a single email with a couple of small paragraphs and a four point bulleted list extolling the virtues of their services and the benefits of a page 1 listing on Google’s SERPS. Not particularly impressive or informative in itself.

There was nothing in there about the technique or strategy the company would be using, an important factor if the site owner is to be reassured that the deal they are entering into isn’t going to damage any existing Google listings they may have. Secondly it transpired that their “promise” only applied to one keyword phrase that the site owner nominated themselves. So in other words, for £75 per month this company promised a page one listing for only a single phrase irrespective of whether that phrase had been correctly researched or not.

An incorrectly researched phrase could be too broad or poorly targeted which at best would only attract “browsers” not “buyers” and at the worst would attract the wrong type of visitor altogether.

Thirdly it became apparent that the site owner was locked into their services if he wanted to maintain his page 1 position for his nominated phrase. Once the site owner’s contract ended with the SEO company, so does his page 1 position. That is to say; throughout the duration of the site owner’s contract with these guys, there was no ranking history being established with Google. If the client wanted to move to a different SEO company at any point the whole positioning process would have to start again.

So on behalf of our client I prepared a list of questions that would explore and hopefully address the points I’ve raised above. The client sent off my questions and a short while later, back came a reply.

As I suspected the strategy to be used was Pay-per-click (PPC) using Google Adwords™.

This allowed them to promise a page 1 listing and accounted for the loss of the position at contract end as well as the lack of positioning history. In a nutshell these guys were only selling one PPC advert marketed against one keyword phrase for £75. This advert is no doubt part of a high spending PPC account containing many different adverts for a whole list of different clients, which they run under their own name.

From the SEO company’s point of view it’s not a bad business model and I can see plenty of opportunities for making profit from individual site owners. However from the site owner’s perspective it offers little value. £75 per month for one phrase in an Adwords campaign that does not allow the site owner to manage or access themselves is not good value. The lack of effective keyword research could lead to a wasted campaign delivering little or no results for the site owner’s. For any Adwords campaign a wide range of keyword phrases need to be researched with individual adverts being written for segmented groups of phrases.

So if anyone calls your business with “good deal” promise, dig a little deeper before you sign-up. Be sure that your expectations match what will be delivered in the long term.

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Tags: Google Tools, Lead Generation, Search Engines, SEO