I don’t want to mention the SEO service specifically, but I need your opinion on this type of SEO service offering and get your take if it achievable with white SEO tactics and an “algorithm” that the firm is “not at liberty” to explain.
They have brought our pagerank for our chosen keywords up to page 2 in Google. I just don’t feel comfortable with this arrangement.
Pitch from SEO service: [SIZE=“5”]
We will not take any payment unless we move your site to page 1 with your desired keywords.
We don’t charge you until you reach page 1.[/SIZE]
Now I summarized that, it’s not their exact pitch, regardless, is the substance of that offering achievable with white hat SEO tactics?
Is any firm capable of sustaining these results in the long term without your typical link building and content development strategies?
Yeah… if they mention anything about algorithm or can’t explain something, that is almost always black hat. I would never use a SEO firm that can’t tell me what they’re doing (at least in general terms).
White hat SEO is all common stuff, it just takes a lot of work. It’s sort of like mowing a lawn… everyone knows how, it just takes time, so some people hire others to do it for them (usually with more precision, but basically the same approach).
That sounds highly dodgy to me. If they’re not prepared to give you any clue as to how their algorithm works (they don’t need to give you the whole strategy - it’s like the difference between a list of ingredients and the full recipe with cooking instructions) then they are almost certainly trying to hide something.
There’s no way that they can guarantee a sustained 1st page position for an arbitrary set of keywords without using black hat techniques.