USA SEO Pros Responds to Scam Complaints
April 27, 2009 at 11:48 pm | In Company Improvement, Services, search engines, sem, seo | 11 CommentsTags: internet marketing, Search Engine Optimization, search engines, sem, seo, USA SEO Pros, usaseopros, usaseopros.com
In any business arena, you’re bound to run into disgruntled clients or unhappy ex-employees. No where do you find that more commonly than the realm of internet-based businesses. What makes the internet so great – the free flow of information and communication – is also what allows unhappy people vent their feelings.
Competitors also serve as a source of misinformation and negativity. We have come across several instances where the blog post was written by a company in the same industry who intended to hark their services.
First and foremost, let me assure everyone that we have no problem with an open and honest communication. USA SEO Pros supports diverse ideas and opinions and the company would never attempt to silence anyone.
That being said, there is a certain code of ethics that comes with doing business. Like many businesses, we include a mutual disparagement agreement with each of our clients. This means that we agree to speak of them only in a positive light, and they agree to do the same.
Of course, not all clients stick to their side of the agreement all the time, and this has led to some posts appearing on the Internet. It’s generally from older client accounts who say they feel slighted by their SEO campaign due to slow sales.
The agreement and promise USASEOPros makes to its clients is not for a certain number of sales. While the goal of our marketing campaigns for our clients is always to help them achieve an increase in revenue, exposure does not always equal sales.
With some sites, visitors simply wouldn’t buy from them regardless of the ranking. Not all sites are created equally, and since we work to drive traffic to the client’s site, not all sites will sell the same.
USA SEO Pros offers a service called a “conversion consultancy”. This means that one of our web designers will take a look at your original site and make suggestions to improve the flow and design of it. Web sites should be easy to navigate, have an appealing aesthetic and should direct the visitor efficiently through the content and move them into the sales pipeline. If the client’s original site struggles to do this normally, increased exposure on the search engines won’t help much.
Unfortunately, some of our clients who haven’t seen the sales numbers they were looking for blame our company. As far as we know, USA SEO Pros has yet to NOT hit the targeted number of first page placements. We’ve read some posts about whether or not USASEOPros is a scam, but when we are able to get our clients first page rankings like these, we feel the blame is being distributed unfairly.
Not every client will rank every keyword on the first page for every search engine. Google recently underwent an algorithm change and they are apparently gearing up for another big one soon. Here our client ranked quite well on Yahoo, MSN and Live Search, but didn’t turn up on Google. Our development team is working on a brand new framework that will make adjustments very simple when Google makes an algorithm change. There is no guarantee for a specific search engine, although we are remarkably successful on Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Live Search. You can view an example of our search engine optimization ranking report here.
When things don’t go as someone planned, they often attempt to point the finger and assign blame. Sometimes in our business arena, the finger gets pointed at us. We’re a business, and that comes with the territory. But the same medium that gives those disgruntled clients a forum to vent also gives us a chance to post a rebuttal.
Most importantly here is the fact that USA SEO Pros has continued to honor our mutual non-disparagement agreement. Several clients have chosen to take the moral low road, but you’ll notice we’re not mentioning names. In the examples of rank reports, we have blurred out the client names and URLs so as to protect the identity of our client.
We work very hard to perform a professional search engine optimization service at USASEOPros. Every business partner we work with is someone to respect and dedicate ourselves to. It’s unfortunate when the relationship turns sour, but we take our role of online marketers very seriously.
Unhappy ex-employees are an entirely other matter. The current economic downturn has placed an extraordinary amount of stress on the American working public and the businesses that employ them.
USA SEO Pros employs roughly 60 team members, each with their own situations and each with their own personal concerns. Every employee has the opportunity for upward mobility and initiative and drive are certainly encouraged. If you would like, you can read the company’s mission statement.
As much as management would love to give steadily increasing salaries to all of our employees, prudent business sense dictates otherwise. Consequently, if an employee has extenuating circumstances and feels pressured to earn more money, they sometimes go about it in an unprofessional manner.
If management feels that at the present time a salary increase isn’t warranted, this does sometimes cause tension and friction. We’ve read posts and letters online from upset ex-employees who either left their position by choice, or were asked to leave due to a problem in the workplace.
Occasionally we get people who are no longer employed at USA SEO Pros and they feel the need to lash out and call the business a scam. It’s unfortunate that a few dissatisfied people can smear a company, but that is their prerogative. We have many employees at USA SEO Pros who have been with the company for years and are happy with the company and their earning potential.
The bottom line is that in any business, you’re bound to end up with someone who walks away unhappy. You can do your best to avoid it, but if a company is in business long enough, it’s going to happen. The most you can do is approach each and every day as an opportunity to help someone.
At USA SEO Pros, we strive to help our clients and their businesses succeed. We can’t please everyone, but we certainly try. We hope that when you run across negative information about our company – or any other! – you’ll not rush to judgment. USA SEO Pros has thousands of clients who are satisfied with their search engine optimization results. We have run many successful online marketing campaigns for our clients. Tomorrow is another day for us, and another opportunity to show how effective organic search engine optimization can be.
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Pingback by USA SEO Pros Responds to Scam Complaints « Of Business Interest Blog — April 27, 2009 #
It’s good to see a company come forward and address allegations like this. Domino’s stepped forward after the video incident. That video could have easily damaged the company further, but by responding to the issue, Domino’s gave it a positive response. I’m glad to you you guys are doing it too.
Comment by Brian — April 28, 2009 #
I run my own business and have dealt with ex employees who tried to ruin me. Good luck with everything!
Comment by Jonelle — April 29, 2009 #
I’m pleasantly surprised to see this up here. I’ve read the bad press about SEO companies while doing research and it’s a refreshing change to see something like this posted online. Best of luck.
-Jonathan
Comment by Jonathan Nelson — May 8, 2009 #
I really appreciate what you have saying on your blog. It is very interesting and I like it. When having business, we can’t avoid experiencing complaints. Complaints are a factor where the consumer interacts and responds to what they feel on the products and services. It is also the way to get improve to make them satisfied. During my search for today I found an interesting portal for consumers – Business Complaints
Comment by Dolsy — May 14, 2009 #
Thank you all for your comments and support. We do make every effort to ensure all parties are happy with the results of a business partnership. While no one can please everybody, we sure to make that our goal!
Comment by usaseopros — May 20, 2009 #
I appreciate your candor and agree with much of what you say, however I do have concern about high pressure sales tactics. A very dear friend of mine, living on disability and trying very hard to become self supporting, recently agreed to send in some checks to hold a spot. She was told that they would not be remitted until she had the funds to make them good. Within a week or so she was being contacted by your in house collection people and is being constantly harrassed, quite abusively at times. Don’t your sales people do due diligence when trying to make a sale? This poor women is in a tremendous amount of stress because of these calls from your company and her health is very fragile. Since no work has beem done for her, it seems the ethical thing to do would be to void her ‘contract’ and instuct your salespeople to not request that checks be sent in that the potential customer can not make good on.
I am sure you will do the right thing.
Thanks
Comment by Jim — June 28, 2009 #
Jim, we appreciate you taking the time to contact us. If you’d like, please email the name of your friend to press@usaseopros.com and we’ll look into the matter. Occasionally there’s a mix up between the collections office and the sales team. Thank you.
Comment by usaseopros — June 29, 2009 #
It’s nice to see this but after being through two sales calls from you guys, I don’t think it’s all untrue what people say about you. I have sat through two phone sales pitches from you guys and caught your sales people in lies more then once. Your sales people wouldn’t even let me see a contract before agreeing to pay a couple thousand dollars. While you may have a good service, your tactics leave everyone with a bad taste in their mouths and no wonder you get such bad press.
Comment by Jon — August 13, 2009 #
Thank you Jon for your feedback. We’re sorry we weren’t able to assist you with our SEO services. Our sales representatives are put through on-going training, and as such are frequently learning what to do – AND what not to do! It’s also entirely possible that your experience was impacted by the particular representative you spoke with. We try hard to offer a valuable service to our clients, and sometimes our representatives can be over-zealous with their approach. It is something that we monitor.
We wish you luck with your business Jon. We hope you find the success and exposure you’re looking for. If you ever have any questions about our company, services, or SEO in general, please don’t hesitate to find us on Twitter or visit our main blog.
Comment by usaseopros — August 13, 2009 #
While I kind of doubt your techniques will change as I experienced the same type of sales techniques both time I have been called (3-4 months apart). One of the biggest reason I won’t sign up with you is that your guarantee isn’t much of a guarantee. You say you guarantee x number of first page placements on search engines but there is no guarantee you will get on google or the other big ones, and if you don’t meet your guarantee you will just try for another 6 months (with no further guarantee past simply continuing what you have already done). Your sales techniques are tricky. If you simply came to me and said we guarantee you will be on the first page of google with x out of x terms or your money back, I would sign up instantly, but something tells me you wouldn’t make any money.
Comment by Jon — August 13, 2009 #