mdopro1
Regular Member
- Mar 14, 2010
- 445
- 110
So I contracted a White Hat SEO guy who himself is ranking #1 for the keyword that I searched him out with. He claims all is completely White Hat and he limits building links to 20 per day for my site. He's relatively cheap and pretty confident, provided some references too. So I hired him. I gave him 4 keywords to rank for and I expected a monthly report. So I waited full month while I was tracking the keywords all along. My 4 keywords didn't see any, even minor SERP change - not even dance and just stayed around the same area where it was a month before.
So I asked him for a report, the guy was cursing penguin updates and all that. I asked for an update on work in progress at 1 month mark. He reluctantly gave me a list of 250 directories. A bunch of them were from the same country but 99% were submitted and awaiting approval. Then he tells me latest update has devalued directory backlinks and he found out 3 weeks ago about that change. So I asked him why he didn't change his strategy when he found out, he did not have an answer.
At one point the dude says that my site is ranking in top 100 for the keywords, then ran a SERP check and came back with top 400 - so he didn't even check on rankings during the 30 day period?
The guy also goes about saying how he had to hire more people and was paying out of pocket for m yproject - although all I see is 250 submissions in 30 days.
At this point he knows that I'm cancelling so he begs me for more time. Says SEO is a slow game - I understand that but slow doesn't mean ZERO, SERPs should change somewhat, somewhere and linking should have been done during that 1 month time.
I gave him more time but changed my reporting period to bi-weekly. Two weeks later I promptly received a report. This time it's about 100 social bookmarks on random sites and two or three descriptions are used, no spinning. The report also had 50 article submissions. Article was written very well but I only found two articles repeated throughout 50 submissions - 1 article per keyword targeting 2 keywords in total.
Now, At least I have received progress because 50 articles in 2 weeks is way better than 250 directory submissions in 30 days. As of today, my SERPs for targeted keywords are sitting somewhere top 500 to top 400....
What should I do with this guy? I'm not in a contractual obligation or anything. Is this guy using automated software or is he actually doing proper white hat work? I could redirect that money to BHW!!!
Advise is appreciated. Ask me things that I may have missed out on.
So I asked him for a report, the guy was cursing penguin updates and all that. I asked for an update on work in progress at 1 month mark. He reluctantly gave me a list of 250 directories. A bunch of them were from the same country but 99% were submitted and awaiting approval. Then he tells me latest update has devalued directory backlinks and he found out 3 weeks ago about that change. So I asked him why he didn't change his strategy when he found out, he did not have an answer.
At one point the dude says that my site is ranking in top 100 for the keywords, then ran a SERP check and came back with top 400 - so he didn't even check on rankings during the 30 day period?
The guy also goes about saying how he had to hire more people and was paying out of pocket for m yproject - although all I see is 250 submissions in 30 days.
At this point he knows that I'm cancelling so he begs me for more time. Says SEO is a slow game - I understand that but slow doesn't mean ZERO, SERPs should change somewhat, somewhere and linking should have been done during that 1 month time.
I gave him more time but changed my reporting period to bi-weekly. Two weeks later I promptly received a report. This time it's about 100 social bookmarks on random sites and two or three descriptions are used, no spinning. The report also had 50 article submissions. Article was written very well but I only found two articles repeated throughout 50 submissions - 1 article per keyword targeting 2 keywords in total.
Now, At least I have received progress because 50 articles in 2 weeks is way better than 250 directory submissions in 30 days. As of today, my SERPs for targeted keywords are sitting somewhere top 500 to top 400....
What should I do with this guy? I'm not in a contractual obligation or anything. Is this guy using automated software or is he actually doing proper white hat work? I could redirect that money to BHW!!!
Advise is appreciated. Ask me things that I may have missed out on.
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