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SEO Agency I hired wants to wait for Volatility. Is that standard procedure?
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This isn’t a budget issue – its a communication issue. SEO experts come in two varieties – creatives that understand the technical aspects, and technical experts.
In both cases, what you are paying for besides results is the quality of the communication you are getting.
If you want better communication, you need to know how to ask for it. Communication is a 2-way street. You may have some technical wizards you have hired that are shit at communicating exactly what you are paying for.
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For example, most of your current budget could have been spent on them purchasing high-quality backlinks for you. So the reason they are waiting isn’t because they are doing nothing, but rather because they are shit at explaining that they want to see what measurable lift the backlinks they’ve purchased provide your site before how to cost-effectively expand on those results.
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Or they spent most of the initial time fixing technical issues like site speed, cleaning up code, delisting certain pages, adding metatags, doing keyword research, etc.
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You may have also hired folks that are afraid to tell their clients what the process will look like because they don’t want you to “steal it” from them and just pay someone cheap to follow what they feel would be “their template”.
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In any event, you should let them know that you want to understand what has been ACCOMPLISHED for the $2500 you have already paid them. Have you gotten a timeline of results? Have you gotten a projection on the lift you can expect? Do you know what strategy they are using and why its better than other strategies that might be employed?
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What have they given you in writing regarding what you are paying for and what you can reasonably expect? How far off from what they have given you in writing are they from what you currently know and understand? That’s where your conversation with them as a vendor should begin.
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Let them know your expectations, let them know how to manage your expectations, and set the expectation that if they don’t manage your expectations that you’ll replace them. Not much more beyond that which you can do honestly.
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There IS a certain pacing to posting that some SEO folks use though, so this is not totally out of the ordinary. Without knowing specifics about your site and its current benchmarks though, its difficult to say whether they are making sense or pissing on you while claiming it’s raining.
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Capacity is often an issue in December – that’s not your problem, but something to consider.
It may be that the agency has shifted workload around to focus on your deliverables in the back half of the month. It’s not ideal, but I seriously doubt they’d fuck you completely if they came with a recommendation. That’s like a guarantee of losing extra business for them.
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Google search is inherently volatile. They release changes quite often. If volatility dictates their work schedules, then bank on nothing getting done. Sounds like they are making excuses. Typical agency nonsense.
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Perhaps they’ve heard that doing blog posts “for SEO” isn’t working particularly well right now and trying to come up with something different.
A really well thought out and executed blog post doesn’t have anything to do with “volatility.” You can publish something amazing anytime!
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Umm I’m new to SEO and blogging but isn’t $2500 too much for a month?
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u/irockvans there are times in our practice where we make a handful of changes and we are waiting to see what sticks. In that period we wait for volatility, but there should be a handful of monitoring and tracking efforts in that time. At the same time there should be a roadmap or plan in place to help guide you through this process so you have an idea of what to expect each month.
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All they’ve done for $2500 is made 1 long post? That sounds really strange.
I’ve been an SEO agency owner for 13 years and we do a lot more for our clients in that budget.
Something doesn’t add up.
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I have worked with clients as low as $500 a month, and as much as $25,000 a month, Jo Mather the price, i work on what is agreed-upon should be done… If they’re not doing it because they’re waiting for the next update, and just fire their asses, and don’t pay them another dime.
Sorry for typos, voice to text in a hotel lobby
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SEO guy here. Please fire these people.
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Update: So it sounds like I’m getting the runaround and being taken advantage of. I’m going to give them a call tomorrow and have them explain their work. If they continue to give me excuses I will shame their company here so the next business won’t be taken advantage of.
Red Flag Discovery. I decided to look up their team members on their about profile and it seems they are all using stock images of their employees…. none of them are real. This isn’t looking good for me.
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Tactics can change but good seo strategy works regardless of Google updates.
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Msg me ur site. I’ll look at it
That type of retainer is good but should already include the backlinking, especially since it takes time for Google to rank your site and subsequent pages. Maybe they’re doing a good job of interlinking and onpage seo.
But I don’t see the whole “waiting for an update” excuse to check out. Seo is seo. And white hat techniques will work regardless of google updates.
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Is no one else concerned about a single blog post that has 2,000 keywords in it?
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You can get a 2,000 word article written for like $300 so I’d be wondering where the rest of the $2.5k is going. They could be doing hundreds of other tasks. Also even if the rankings are “volatile” you shouldn’t stop posting content. One month in they wouldn’t even have any benchmarks to say if you were effected by a core update.
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You’re getting played. They paid someone $100 to make a blog post on upwork most likely.
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