For those of you who don't know, here is the definition of SEO according to Wikipedia: search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("search results). Basically an SEO company is supposed to draw more traffic to your website through the natural search results (which are the non-sponsored results that show up in the middle section of search results page).
If you own a website and are looking for a SEO company or company to handle your Pay-Per Click campaigns, DO NOT USE ENGINEWORKS.com! I wasted 6 months of our company's time and money with them and have absolutely nothing to show for it.
OUR STORY - When looking for an SEO company, I called around to 5-10 companies. Being new to this type of marketing, we were a little hesitant and honestly didn't know what we were looking for. Price was always a big concern but more importantly, we wanted someone who knew what they were doing and obviously we wanted results!
After a few weeks of shopping around, we finally chose a company called EngineWorks.com. They were in the same town as us (which I liked) they were affordable, and they claimed to have a different strategy than most SEO companies (it involved creating new optimized pages for your site, rather than optimize the existing pages) which according to their sales rep was the best approach to website optimization? I was a little hesitant but the sales rep sounded very trusting and we decided to go for it by signing a 6 months contract.
FYI one of the biggest selling points was when I was told I we would have X amount of keywords in the first and second pages of all the search engines within 4-6 monthsBig mistake for believing that. After speaking to other SEO companies, they basically said we were ripped off).
Here's when I knew that I may have made a mistake by signing with Engine Works. The first month of working with them, there was basically no communication unless I initiated it (i.E. Asking them when they would start working on our site).
Finally a month and a half later, they gave me the first two pages of optimized content (that we were to use on the new page that was supposed to help our rankings with in a few months). The content consisted of 2 measly pages, had spelling and punctuation errors that we caught within the first 2 minutes of reading it and most importantly, it didn't fit the image we were going after (Now that I think about it, it was a stupid to think that a company [Engine Works] who barely knows you, your corporate culture, goals, products, image, etc, could write quality content about what you have to offer and why someone should choose you instead of a competitor!)
To make a long story short, I was with them for 5 months and cancelled my 6 month contract without any dispute from them for cancelling early. Why? Because in 6 months they didn't generated a single hit to our website and they knew exactly what they told me when I signed it. And they didn't even come close to delivering!
(FYI to date, not one of the pages they created for us has shown up on the first or second pages of a search engine). When I spoke to the president at the end of our contract and explained our situation, he didn't even argue. All he said was something along the lines of you're absolutely right, we didn't do what we said we would do and said sorry thinking that would make up for things. (This was after he tried to make the excuse that our website needed to be re-done in order to be seen by the search engines.
What he forgot was that when I first signed on, one of my first questions was whether or not any changes needed to be made to our website before they started. Supposedly one of there techs looked at our site and said it was ok. I signed that contract under this assumption).
By this point, I figured what was done was done and I took complete responsibility for wasting thousands of $ and I needed to find a new company. The second time around, I went with a new company (and believe me, I did a ton of research before choosing them.
While do this research, I also learned a lot about how big of a mistake I made by going with Engineworks.com. Any company who I was interviewing with had a look at the work Engine Works did for us and basically laughed at how bad the pages were. The simplest things were not done correctly, I kid you not, I had 3 companies tell me that they believe EngineWorks.com ripped us off). I can't tell you how much better our new SEO company was than engineworks.com (and they cost the same)!
Within the first 3 weeks, what they had done to our search engine results was outstanding! I was so shocked I called them to ask how they were able to get these results so fast.in a nut-shell they told me it was really not too difficult and only a few simple things on our website needed to be changed.
I've never written a bad review about a company and honestly don't like writing this... But looking back on everything, I have to. The fact that our new SEO company did what they did in 3 weeks and the fact that engineworks.com didn't do anything in 6 months, angers me
(FYI to date, the pages they created are still uploaded on our site and they're still not even close to the first or second pages of any search engine!). They wasted thousands and thousands of our hard earned money and never offered to refund a single penny. I'm not one to ask for freebees but I'll tell you this if I had a customer who I charged thousands for a service that brought them absolutely no value, I would do absolutely everything I could to make sure they were completely satisfied, not give them a we're sorry speech.
I could go on and on with how disappointed we were with this company, but I think you get the ideado not do business with engineworks.com!
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