Looking for some professional SEO help.

Hi Barney

Sympathise with your plight, and had a similar situation a few years ago. As someone else said, this will be down to the contract.

In my situation, I was very unhappy with the quality of the work, and removed access to our site as they were causing damage.

I withheld payment and cited them with breaking their own contract, as they hadn't provided me with a satisfactory service.

I took legal advice and was told it would be a costly court battle, as they were a large company, but I hate being ripped off, and it became a matter of principle.

After repeated attempts, I finally got into communication with the MD, and made it clear I would be pursuing legal action, and in the end we agreed to break contract and both parties walk away without court action.

It was an unpleasant experience, and has made me deeply cynical of SEO companies, and I've had further poor experience from another UK firm.

If you can settle out of court and break contract, then this is obviously the best alternative, but as evidence, I used a 3rd party application called site alarm, which logged any site outages. I was told at the time, this would carry more weight, as this was impacting our business, as opposed to poor link building practices or my perceived poor standard of their work.

SEO can be a murky world, but there are a lot of very professional consultants, and I've said before, I'd now only engage consultants from places like forums who have a good reputation.

Bit like word of mouth recommendation when your after a plumber or a sparky!

Wish all the best in your predicament.

Thanks for the information, we spent around an hour chatting this morning and and he is very knowledgeable. And he clocked on straight away what was wrong with the site. I should also say he made more sense to me in 10 minutes than any seo company I have spoken to before. He's said he will take a look a look at it over the coming days. So hopefully something positive will come out of this... Once again thanks...

Any cowboys in my line of work, soon get outed and brought before the courts. Anything to do with gas related work then the cowboy will be issued with a prohibition notice from the HSE to stop work. As for seo companies, unless they do self regulate or agree to a code of conduct, then they should refrain from requesting large deposits up-front. At the moment the risk factor to a client is no different than picking dogs 2 x 6 on the 13.06 race a Crayford which cannot be right. What it needs is someone to take a leap of faith within the inner circles and give you guys some kind of credibility. I for one would never pay anyone up-front seo work again. I also think if more businesses to that stand it would force the industry to clean its act up. If you have no deposits coming in then you have no work...

It's all about principle for me, they had ample opportunity to rectify their mistakes, they simply have chosen not too. I could pay them now and walk away from it all. But then it happens to the next business and the next and so forth. After I have paid the legal fees, travel, loss of work etc I will have lost out financially anyway as I can only recoup certain costs from the court. On the flip side should I lose I can always take it to appeal, failing in that court... well have to see....

So you know the welsh seo wizard eh?

Have followed around various forums for some time, and have his blog on my bookmarked list.

Did chuckle when I saw him on the telly, he really does look like his avatar

There arent many folk I would think to recommend but OWG is definitely one so if he can help you are in good hands.

One thing though, you point out about what could/should you have expected them to do, but didnt you know or ask what they would be doing? What exactly did your order/quote consist of? There must have been some written dialogue in a quote and subsequent invoice that outlines what you were getting and any supporting information that you would have sought before entering into a contract surely?

Yep there was a purchase order listing 4 specific parts that they were to carry out. Only one part was carried out to my satisfaction. As a Gas Safe registered business, I am not allowed to promote, advertise or use any references to CORGI, whether other companies still do promote CORGI is irellevent, it is clearly written within the rules of being registered with the Gas Safe register which is overseen by the HSE, if we do we are liable to prosecution under the trading standards. Like I said 3 days after they started i wrote to them asking them to stop using CORGI terms, they havent removed any of it which I asked them to. So if I'm accountable and liable for prosecution because they have failed to rectify what I asked them to do should I pay them and then have to pay someone else to do it?
Putting the contract aside for a moment, would it be fair to say that what an seo company does, is to write, thats what they do for a living. So if that is the case, would it not be fair for a client to expect properly structured sentences? Or would this need to be written into a contract. After all if you order a new car, it is not written into the purchase contract that it will come with wheel nuts, because you the customer would rightly assume that it would automatically come with nuts right? Same thing, what is reasonably expected...

Flicking around Twitter last night, this seo company was proudly announcing the launch of it's brand new website. Being a nosey sod I had to take a peek and to be honest I knew that these blue chip companies were not going to be listed, and guess what? Not a single mention of them ever having been clients. Fortunately their original screen shots and claims plus the denial letters have been handed into the court...

Yes I see your point Barney, beyond the outline of requirments, you expect a certain level of professional standards to be par for the course which should not need detailing, like using correct spelling, like following a clear simple instruction/requirement (ie please do not use the word 'corgi' at all). But this is all your evidence with this other stuff. I hope that you do win where they are proved to have lied to win your business. Loads out there like that. Someone even said to me yesterday I ought to out some testimonials on a website we have done for a new business I am involved with and I said at the time that because it was brand new business, no customers at that time (even now its too early to get them) there was none to use so she said "make them up" and I said I would never do that. A lot do though.

Back in the day he was the guy who helped me with my wife's website in 2001' ish, which then started me done my own SEO path.

He is good guy because he believes in sharing the knowledge and will help you out and see's things that most would just miss - I had a site that was going nowhere fast and said look James done everything I should have done so why no progress - 2 minutes later are you have a BOM issue, changed it and up the site went in the rankings where it should be.