I own a small automotive shop that needs to advertise to stay alive. Period.internet marketing is the best bang for your buck I know, so I had a web site made. Then I found a company to make it come up on the first page of Google. It worked so well that after a year I had to stop advertising because I couldn't handle any more work. Then about two years later I was too busy for my present location so I moved, to a much more expensive location that is also much bigger. OK Time to expand.
I get a call one day from a Egumball.com rep saying that they're some sort of partners with Google and that Egumball.com is the leading Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short) company right now. The timing was right for me and I managed to read only good reviews about them so I went with it. I Signed a year contract too. Which I regretted.
They were slow on all their work and after I had actually signed up they wouldn't provide any timeline for progress. Months go buy and I find online a totally different website (with several weird characters in it that were a horrible type-o) that they had made me without my knowledge that was just a template site that had a link to my official page. When I called to complain that this wasn't what I had been promised, that I wanted my website, and about the type-o's they said that they would fix the type-o's and never did. Then they said they weren't getting the results they wanted with my site so they made this one for me. They also couldn't figure out how to access my Google places account so they set up another.
They set up another Google places account. With my website's name! This is the most important part. When Google sees two or more Places accounts for the same Website they group them together and give them one of their more severe penalties. THIS SEVERELY DAMAGES YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION WITH GOOGLE!!! Meaning for me? No front page and lots of wasted money.
I ended up talking them into letting me out of the contract in 6 months instead of 12 because they screwed up so bad. The biggest problem now is that I'm using an automotive focused SEO company now that really takes the time to describe to me whats going on, and I find out how very, very badly this can effect my overall ranking. Even with more good reviews than anyone else in my town I'm still not on the front page because of this. Whats worse is that if I quit paying to have the SEO done then the damage will never be undone.
Makes me wonder if others have this same complaint. This has been very costly for me in actual money plus no new customers after the move. I'm moving into an RV now so I can keep the bigger shop. I can't help but think that this could have been easily avoided by using a company that actually knows what they are doing, and cares. I know the economy is horrible, but the phone should be ringing more and I think this is a big part of why its not.
I hope this post educated at least someone in how to help yourself not have this happen to you and your company. Please don't let Egumball.com do your SEO. Find someone local and small who actually cares.
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