SEO Agency I hired wants to wait for Volatility. Is that standard procedure?
Hello,
I hired an SEO agency recently to help me rank for some keywords and we are 1 month into the work. I am currently paying around $2500 a month for their work. So far, they've created a 2,000 word count blog post for my website and that's about it so far. The agreement was to have on-site optimization, backlink outreach, and blogging done.
Right now, they want to wait for the Google update volatility to settle before they make any changes or continue with their work.
Is this a normal procedure? My issue is I can't afford to just pay them to sit idle while they wait for the Google update volatility to settle. I need to see some sort of progress on a weekly basis that work is being done and we are moving forward. If that was the case, It would've been smarter financially to just hire them a month after the Google December update because right now in my shoes, I feel like I am just paying for this month for 1 blog post and that's about it.
Update #1: So it sounds like I'm getting the runaround and being taken advantage of. I'm going to give them a call tomorrow and have them explain their work. If they continue to give me excuses I will shame their company here so the next business won't be taken advantage of.
Update #2 Red Flag Discovery. I decided to look up their team members on their about profile and it seems they are all using stock images of their employees… none of them are real. This isn't looking good for me. 140 💬🗨
thegorilla Are they doing anything? What industry are you in? They should be able to do an audit (to understand your site) and create content without worrying about "volatility". I'm working with a client who wants weekly updates, but those relate to my work, not rankings. I think it's fair to provide progress reports.
irockvans ✍️ I'm in the Cannabidiol (CBD) industry so we can't really use Google Pay Per Click (PPC) or Facebook ads at the moment.
That's the thing I asked for a progress update for their work and they just replied back that right now Google update has caused a lot of volatility and they are keeping an eye out for changes during their research phase. Like what? Am I just paying for them to spend a month on research??
William Just reading this you may actually benefit from a local SEO campaign rather than wholesale SEO changes to the site. There's quite a few options outside of Google PPC and Facebook Ads. You might consider setting up an optimized Google Business Profile and build your local ranking from there. lefty You're in the CBD space and you're only paying $2,500 a month!? Sorry to break it to you but at that budget it's gonna be a long slow crawl to see any results unless you have a really clear category class that's yours. CBD is one of the most competitive industries. And the fact that your market can't advertise on PPC and Facebook just means that every other CBD company is putting all their marketing dollars into organic.
Seriously, I wouldn't touch a CBD company for anything less than $5k/month and even that's really low for your space. Did this SEO company talk to you about that and set low expectations at that budget? If not they either don't know how to research or they just wanted to take your cash.
On another note it's not good to make changes during Google updates as it's hard to tell what worked or not. And it's not like we get a heads up from google. For all you know this company could be crafting the on page optimization strategy so once things settle they can jump on and plug it all in. That's what I do. I still do the work but might hold off on implementing changes for a little while.
Rhavasher If they want to wait for a Google update, and do not want to do any work in the meantime then they should not charge you for the days they are going to sit and wait.
irockvans ✍️ I agree. It blows my mind that an agency that charges this much a month can think they can just cruise on the work and not expect me to not be aware. If I'm going to spend $$$ on your SEO services you BET I'm going to be on your ass about every work progress. If they only charged me $100 a month, I won't even complain.
Rhavasher Right agreed, as much as I agree with you, I would suggest not listening to what everyone on this subreddit has to say, if an SEO comes on here and mentions how they charge $4000+ for one article per month (2000 keywords) everyone will praise him and tell him how amazing he is and how they can do the same but if a client comes here and says they are being charged $2000 for one article everyone on this subreddit will tell you to run…
SomeSEOGuy 2000 words a month is too less from a blogging perspective. Also, if they wanted to wait for the volatility to settle, they could have updated your exiting blog posts, optimized your page speed, and built backlinks.
Also, what about future Google updates? They push out at least 1-2 core updates and many smaller updates every year, do they plan to keep a hold every time?
I can't think of any of my clients who would agree to this. This is because good SEO cushions a website against Google Algorithms, sure there are fluctuations, but the rankings restore within a week.
irockvans ✍️ Yeah I'm starting to feel jaded at this point. I know SEO is a long term game but right now it feels like they are using this "Google update volatility" as an excuse for not giving me a work of progress update.
BoringBlackberry This sounds like complete bs.
Unless they are panicking because they have a lot of clients that have tanked recently and don't have time to work with you.
I mean it's bs for sure but that might be the real reason behind it
irockvans ✍️ They did mention before that they have been busy trying to stabilize other client's SEO work. If that is the reason, then they should've been straight up with me and not sign me on as a client if they don't have time to work with me instead of stringing me along. That's not good business and just leaves a bad first month of impression.
BoringBlackberry I've only seen crap from SEO agencies
I got a local site up to number one and then my brother hired a SEO agency and over about 18 months they've taken him from the first page always top 3 too buried deep in the sixth page … I would get out now and find someone local or an individual.
With SEO there's always a good chance that your work is being outsourced but with an agency I think it's guaranteed that 99% of the work done is outsourced to the cheapest bidder
irockvans ✍️ Update: So it sounds like I'm getting the runaround and being taken advantage of. I'm going to give them a call tomorrow and have them explain their work. If they continue to give me excuses I will shame their company here so the next business won't be taken advantage of.
Red Flag Discovery. I decided to look up their team members on their about profile and it seems they are all using stock images of their employees… none of them are real. This isn't looking good for me. Snoo Update?
irockvans ✍️ I've confronted them and they tried to show me all of this work they made up on spot with their Trello board. Example: 2 days for competitor gap analysis, 3 days for keyword research, 3 days for sitemap submission.
In the end i could tell they were trying to find more excuses. I asked for a refund and they obliged and returned my money after i mentioned i made a Reddit post.
