Promotion or Scam: How SEO Studios Deceive Clients

The digital services market has changed a lot recently. Technologies operating at the dawn of SEO are already slipping. The time has come to work according to new trends and requirements of the PS. But have all SEO promotion agencies realized that a new era is coming?! Many people work according to old habits, which does not always guarantee a good result. We will teach you how to recognize an honest company and refuse the services of obvious scammers in time.

And we will also tell you why you can’t rely solely on SEO and what additional technologies will help you get exactly the result of promoting your resource on the Internet that most customers hope for.

The article will be useful to those businessmen who have already had an unsuccessful experience of cooperation with unscrupulous specialists, and to those who have decided to use advertised promotion in search engines for the first time.

We will answer sensitive questions:
What tricks do digital agencies use to lure a client?
What must be clarified before signing an official contract?
How to understand at the initial stage of negotiations that the wrong door has been opened and it is wiser to look for another web studio?

Which makes you doubt the benefits of SEO

It is with regret that we are forced to state that the gore-seoshniks are not aiming at a long-term project. Most of them set themselves simplified goals. They use all sorts of tricks to deceive search engines and get quick results. As a result, the site lags over time and loses position. The reason is that the studios who want to get rich easily do everything that is called “on the knee”. As a result, the businessman loses both money and real customers.

The slogan: “We will build the structure quickly, you will pay the main thing” – became the mantra of many active in the Ukrainian market of digital agencies.

And the business, once faced with outright deception, stops believing that search promotion can really work to increase profits.

As it was before

At the dawn of time, SEO promotion was relatively easy. It was enough to write a long text, “decorate” it with keywords according to the principle “the more, the better” and that’s it – the first positions in the edition are secured. But searchers did not sleep and quickly noticed that a large canvas is not always a masterpiece and began to fight with them.

Then seoshniks opened another loophole: they began to buy referral bases from various sources. And grace came again. The number of visitors to the sites grew. But failure: quantity does not always turn into quality: people came, but did not buy anything.

When the client began to complain, they said, how come? In the web studios, they bred with little hands, they say they tried, but the result is zero, they are not to blame.

At the same time, they actively took money. The cost of the services was estimated at UAH 15,000. Of them, UAH 5,000. went to purchase links, UAH 10,000. were net profit. With the end of the link base lease, the resource, of course, sagged. The poor businessman had no choice but to ask for help again – the circle is closing.

But now the sites are slapped painfully on the hands for low-quality purchase links and are mercilessly fined. Those caught in such frauds fall under the sanctions of search engines and lose their place in the TOP. It is very difficult to get out of such a situation.

When it became known that search engines began to study the behavior of users when visiting a web resource, SEO specialists were not confused. They diligently took the bull by the horns and turned for help to programs and services that promise to improve behavioral factors related to:

the time the CA representative spent on the website;
to what extent the user delved into the depth of the portal;
as I researched the information on the page in detail;
how many rejections were there

The system gave a positive result. But not for very long. Search engines have become against artificial cheats, and sanctions have started again.

Today, all possible methods of legal deception have reached a dead end. Web studios beat their chests and swear that they work exclusively honestly.

Opening the page of any decent digital agency, you will find a list of promises:

we work under an official contract;
we provide a full SEO audit;
we study the strengths and weaknesses of competing organizations;
we help improve usability;
we will display the portal in the TOP search engines for highly competitive queries;
let’s make a semantic core;
let’s increase the conversion.

Since it is practically impossible for an inexperienced person to understand the intricacies of this mechanism on the fly, we will try to dot the “and” so that it becomes clear to you what such agencies do and whether they can really help.

Are guarantees possible in SEO?

Resolutely – no! It is quite simple to explain: an invisible but tangible third party to the contract – the search engine – can really “put a pig” in the form of a changed ranking algorithm.

Even if a specialist does everything within the framework of Google or Yandex recommendations, this will not be a guarantee of an absolute hit to high positions in search results. There is no ideal standard to which we should strive in the optimization of the resource in order to guarantee the client high traffic and conversion.

It is with regret that we have to state that no one knows exactly what criteria search engines use to evaluate sites, how the algorithm selects one site and misses another.

Seoshniks rely on acquired experience, their own and borrowed assumptions about the actions of algorithms. And if we take into account that search engines are characterized by variability and tomorrow the algorithm can drastically change the guidelines, then we come, unfortunately, to a disappointing conclusion: promises of the highest results in the near future are empty sounds.

The only thing that the agency can definitely guarantee is that the commitments undertaken will be fulfilled on time and with the highest possible quality. A bluff is a statement like:

the result is guaranteed;
we guarantee to bring it to the TOP-3, 5, 10;
financial success is guaranteed.

They should be considered no more than an attractive marketing move to gain popularity with the customer and make him choose this web studio.

But if you start asking specific questions about real guarantees, then as a rule, you will hear in response that in reality everything is not quite so and what kind of guarantees it can be, because each project is individual, various factors affect the promotion and so on.

In any case, you can call any agency that promises guarantees in SEO and listen to the arguments of the managers. All this can be considered as a certain marketing move.

The reality of using keywords

The words “request frequency”, “number of requests per month”, which optimizers love so much, should not make you tremble. A link from sales professionals like: “Look, 35,670 people search for this query every month. We should bring it to the TOP, you will immediately have an army of visitors.” The client is impressed, nods in agreement and approves the list.

Several months pass. You notice that sales are not increasing. You turn to the seoshnik who promised golden mountains. And he throws up his hands – the site is in the TOP, all requests have been approved by you, what are the claims.

Let’s figure out why the money was spent in vain.

In order for the client to be satisfied, and the result of the company’s work to look impressive, the promoter introduces into the semantic core expressions that have zero frequency or close to it. Such requests very easily bring the resource to TOP positions, but do not increase traffic. The phrase “winter shoes for babies are cheap” or “women’s summer clothes can be bought inexpensively” will look very appropriate, but with a detailed analysis it becomes clear that these are empty words, and people do not use such requests in reality.

Google (https://ads.google.com/intl/ru_ru/home/tools/keyword-planner/) and Yandex (wordstat.yandex.ru) services allow you to determine the frequency of requests. It is enough to log into your account, select the desired region, enter a phrase, for example “buy a table” and click Enter. The service will produce a very impressive figure of 76,520 requests in just one month. Excellent, you can prepare a bag for money. But it is too early to rejoice.

This is what is actually happening. All requests containing the words “buy a table” got here: “buy a used table”; “Buy a square table in good condition”, “buy a coffee table” and others.

To assess reality, you need:

put the words in quotes. In this way, you will get a figure that covers all possible word forms of the key phrase “buy a table”, “buy tables”, etc. – 3,456. As you can see, it is very far from the promised 76,520;
if you add the exclamation mark “!buy !table” to the quotation marks, you will find out how many users type the query “buy table” into the search engine – 3,065.

If the result is 0, then no one is interested in such a request.

This is how you can check the work of seoshniks and make sure: their promises are real or fake.

Now, receiving another report with “impressive” numbers, ask yourself what is reflected in the numbers: bare request; entry is partial; general frequency; using quotation marks or quotation marks and “!”, exact entry.

How to promote a site based on requests

On the websites of companies engaged in promotion in search engines, you can see the message: “We will carry out promotion with a guarantee. From 10 to 100 requests for UAH 15,000.” or “10,000 UAH for 30 requests. We are promoting to TOP”.

Having familiarized himself with the tempting links, the businessman shakes hands with the representative of the company, selects requests and waits for the result with satisfaction. And there is none, because promotion by requests has its own nuances, which many do not realize. Therefore, let’s analyze the errors:

The first is that the businessman relies on his own understanding of which requests are profitable and need to move the resource. But it does not take into account the frequency. In this way, the choice may fall on unnecessary requests. Another option is betting on requests that do not correspond to relevance. It is important to understand that all requests are divided into commercial and informational. When promoting goods and services in the network, the first ones are most suitable – commercial ones, which contain the words “buy”, “order”, “price”. Next comes the name of the product or service. But there are also nuances here, if you enter the word “smartphone”, the search engine will show sites that will tell you about the features of choosing a gadget. If you write “smartphones” – trading platforms will open. Information requests should not be refused. However, search engines have their own opinion here. First of all, they choose blog sites, resources with useful articles, electronic media, etc. A commercial site may not fit into these parameters. With information requests, it is not an easy task to appear in the top editions. There is also this type of request: greeting. In this case, the customer is offered to use the name of the company or store for promotion. But such a request is original in itself and has every chance to be in the first positions. SEO specialists do not have to do any optimization.
The second mistake is agreeing to prepare a certain number of requests. In order to successfully move the site in search engines, an experienced seoshnik creates a semantic core. It includes all possible queries that will search for your resource. The number can be several thousand. Therefore, when it is proposed to focus on 20-30, this is a serious limitation of the possibilities of promotion of the online store. Next, more: presence among the selected high-frequency keywords will lead to the fact that the site will be displaced by competitors.

We conclude: for the successful promotion of the resource, the semantic core should be used without restrictions. This is the best guarantee.

What are SEO companies?

There are two types: SEO studios or conveyor-type agencies.

Let’s start with the good news. SEO studios focus on a small number of customers. They always have a well-thought-out strategy for a specific project. The drawn up plan must be announced to the client and only after agreement becomes an instruction for application. Questions arising during the work are discussed with the customer. Prepared files with textual materials, semantic core, developed video content, etc.

The client is always aware of how the project is progressing, has the opportunity to monitor the dynamics of development, evaluate actions at each specific site.

If everything fits into the described picture, you are lucky. Your portal will be given real attention and every effort will be made to fulfill the commitments made.

Now about conveyor organizations. There are many promises here, but the result leaves much to be desired. They have an important place in the sales department, which is why it exceeds the optimization department in terms of the number of employees.

This is how they work here: the client is notified of an amount in the region of UAH 10,000-15,000. The result is guaranteed in 2-3 months. It seems that everything is fine and the customer agrees. A month later, after spending only three hours on the project, a report is sent to the client. The report makes an impression, but does not give the desired effect. The customer is told that it is still early, he needs to wait. A month later, the situation repeats itself: a good report with encouraging numbers, but there was no flow of visitors, and there is none, although the report says the opposite.

The picture is repeated for the third month. Losing patience, the client is determined to terminate negligent agreements. They try to tempt him with tempting promises: discounts, bonuses, anything for free promotion. Someone is tempted and agrees to continue. Others leave with determination and indignation.

But the company does not lose anything. While the customer was fed with promises, a couple or three more customers were collected. And the scheme continues.

But such breeders necessarily have a core of VIP clients. They are engaged in very seriously, but they also pay much more.

Conclusion: if you want to be among them, allocate an amount in multiples of more than UAH 10,000 for promotion.

In order not to throw money down the drain and not to waste time, when communicating with representatives of companies, pay attention to the questions that are asked to you during the first meeting. Performers should be interested in:

what is the business as a whole;
how it will develop;
who are direct competitors;
which are the most important directions (priority services/goods);
where does the main income come from, are there additional sources of income;
have you already engaged in the organization of search promotion.

And most importantly, a self-respecting company will start with a website audit. Its necessity must be explained to the client.

If the company ignores all of the above, it is hardly worth cooperating with them.

Now it is worth explaining why the 40-page report is empty. It uses data obtained from analytical programs that work automatically in search engines. The wording is mostly copied from old reports and is boilerplate expressions.

Such “work” takes some time. That is why no more than three hours per month will be spent on your site.

Lifehack! Personal delivery or how to pass off what is desired for reality.

There is another scheme that allows you to deceive customers. During a meeting with a customer, a seoshnik demonstrates the results of “successful” activity on his computer or the device of his boss. A very natural question arises, why? The so-called personal issue is used. The search engine, seeing the user’s interest in a specific site, nominates it to the first positions in the output. But all this happens only in the user’s browser, and the real state of the resource is a complete mystery.

It is possible to expose fraudsters, just use the incognito window.

Why do you need a competitor audit?

Analysis of competing companies is an essential part of a proper search engine promotion strategy. The audit allows you to see why search engines favor the resource, what technologies are used by your direct competitors. As a result of careful analysis, you can understand what needs to be published on the site.

If the chosen web studio ignores this point of work, we advise you to shake hands in farewell and look for another artist. If such work is provided, ask for an example and carefully study what it is about.

How to cheat with a technical audit

A well-meaning representative of a digital company, concerned about the shortcomings of the resource, which their specialists discovered during the site inspection, offers to fix everything. You only need to sign a contract for SEO optimization services. At the same time, it paints all its advantages in bright colors: a quick rise to the first lines of search results, targeted traffic, sales growth, and so on.

Keep calm and analyze it carefully. First of all, evaluate whether the detected defects are separated from each other by priority of correction: critical, which need to be dealt with immediately, less urgent, minor. If there is no such distribution, the firm uses a popular deception scheme: to prepare a report with a huge number of errors.

This always strikes an inexperienced person, although there may not be serious reasons for concern.

The fact is that online services and various analyzers work according to certain generalized algorithms. The number of errors often includes moments that are not essential for the operation of a particular site. Unscrupulous agencies use this successfully, because most of their clients are poorly oriented in the technical component.

Here are the most typical “errors”:

the main page has headings H1, H2, but H3, H4, H5, H6 are not detected. For non-informational sites, this is not a critical remark and does not require a response;
check found missing Favicon for Internet Explorer version 8, 9, 10. This error has no impact: the site may well be limited to the presence of the Favicon in the Snippet, and not in the browser. It can be attributed to behavioral factors, and not to serious site errors.

In order not to become a victim of deception after receiving a “scary” document, contact the experts you know or an independent expert. Yes, the audit will cost money, but many times less than the fraudsters will extract.

If you want to act independently, you can use one of the following options:

First. You can use an automatic service that will provide information in a few minutes. But you will not get a complete picture of the technical condition of your resource. Such an analysis will not give an idea of the reasons that led to the errors, how they are related to each other, how to fix it all. You will see only a certain part of the flaws, but you will not understand how to eliminate them.

An example of an incomplete audit:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n3nRIh2rGtFINJk1-Zyl3f06Ilj2cUq3rblt3d2ewmk/edit?usp = sharing

Second. It is more labor intensive. You will have to work in manual mode, analyzing all the components of the promotion of the resource on the Internet. Specialists of professional agencies spend at least three days on this. The work includes the detection of errors, their in-depth analysis and the development of tasks for the elimination of defects.

A full technical audit includes at least 120 independent inspections. We will list only a small part that must be followed before execution:

estimate how fast the page loads;
how correctly the search form works, for placing an order, feedback and the like (or a separate usability audit is carried out);
the presence of “broken” links (can be included in a separate technical audit);
how correctly the errors made by the server are processed;
whether a “404” page is present;
cleanliness of the code, absence of unnecessary scripts;
assess the presence and impact of viruses and harmful codes;
how correctly the resource is displayed in different browsers with different resolutions;
availability of mobile versions.

A lighter version is also possible, which allows you to evaluate:

quality of search requests;
identify resource optimization errors;
check the uniqueness of the text content;
estimate the number of links to the base (inbound and outbound);
how convenient the site is for the average user;
validity of the HTML code;
presence of “broken” links;
adapted resource for mobile devices.

It is important to remember that the audit alone will not solve the site’s problems. Prompt correction of all identified problems is required. If the web studio does not provide recommendations and TK for correcting shortcomings, then it should not be trusted.

Usability audit

It is necessary to assess how convenient it is for website visitors to use the portal. This will fully demonstrate the usability audit. It should be easy for the user to make a purchase, find the necessary information, product/service. Therefore, important buttons such as “Order”, “Buy” should be located in a prominent place. It is beneficial to place phone numbers in a “cap” so that you don’t have to look for them.

Otherwise, the visitor will not stay long and, of course, will not return again.

You must see examples of usability efficiency analysis. They should include not just a statement of facts, but written ways to eliminate them and recommendations for improvement. It will be a big plus if the agency provides data based on the results of A/B testing. These specialists know their business and will not let you down.

What is a commercial audit

The Yandex search system uses a special type of ranking – commercial. With its help, the service evaluates whether a specific resource is worthy of users’ trust: whether it can offer different methods of interaction, whether there is information about the company’s personnel, etc.

Collection of semantic core and preparation of texts

While one part of the digital agency is engaged in a comprehensive analysis of the site, the other selects keywords and prepares texts.

To collect the semantic core, you can use:

Google and Yandex search tips;
special search engine services: wordstat.yandex.ru; https://ads.google.com/intl/ru_ru/home/tools/keyword-planner/; https://serpstat.com and so on;
if you already have a ready-made site, you can use statistics counters.

Another source: online services that help collect keys. True, there is a lot of “garbage”, but a specialist knows how to get rid of it.

The more sources used, the better. There are enough companies in the market of SEO services that do not burden themselves with work. They collect one, in the best case, two sources and calm down. As a result, the resource is promoted extremely inefficiently.

When the core is assembled, you need to clean it up to remove the so-called “garbage” words. They are known to the owner of the advancing enterprise. But an experienced seoshnik will not rest on this and will definitely check the list again to remove the excess.

The clean list should be divided into clusters: group keywords according to the frequency of use and relevance to a certain page of the resource.

Clustering can be done by words or by search results. The first method is practically useless. The second is useful. But after receiving the data, it is necessary to correct them. And this is done manually and takes quite a lot of time, even when working with a small site.

Having built the right blocks of keywords, you can work on creating a resource structure or make changes to an existing one. Next, the initial optimization of the pages is developed. When the preliminary work at this stage is finished, everything is transferred to the site.

The next stage: preparation of text content, analytics and more.

A well-balanced site requires constant monitoring and improvement. If you assumed that after a few months of waiting, you will be able to rest on your laurels and collect dividends, you will be disappointed. Search algorithms are constantly changing, demand tends to fall, and competitors are not ready to let you go ahead.

Get ready for constant work, and leave the cozy oven to the fabulous Fool.

Meta tags

It is necessary to deal with the adjustment of metatags, but not ad infinitum. The ranking of the site and its status in the search engine depends on how faithfully the specialist wrote the Title and Description.

It is normal to make adjustments no more than twice. If you are told the opposite and “improve” the titles and descriptions of the pages for several months, it is worth thinking and reviewing the work of a specialist. Endless changes can seriously damage the resource, and you are threatened with unnecessary expenses that are completely unjustified.

Problems of external promotion

There is no single opinion about the usefulness of links. Some claim that there is no point in them, others deny, considering them an important tool in the promotion of a web resource. We will not find out which of the participants in the discussion is right, but we can say that good references will not be superfluous.

It is more important to understand something else: is it worth contacting exchanges that trade databases with links and buy backlinks? Will it be possible to increase trust in the site in this way?

Low-quality links bought on spam sites in large numbers have a bad effect on the reputation of the resource. Google and Yandex have special algorithms that quickly calculate fraud and severely punish owners.

In order not to be sanctioned by Penguin (Google) or Minusynsk/AGS (Yandex), you should not make pointless purchases.

But there are a sufficient number of resources, whose authority is not disputed, where it is quite legal to purchase quality and useful links: crowd marketing, guest posts, outreach and other methods used by experienced SEOs to promote a website externally.

It is important to assess the “viability” of discussion sites before publishing a link to your resource there.

No less interesting is the question, when should you engage in external promotion? Usually the plan is as follows:

first, they conduct an audit with subsequent correction of errors. One month is allocated for this;
then they work on compiling the semantic core. It takes about 5 months if you need to work on the entire site;
in six months they start external optimization.

As a result, the young site languishes in Google’s so-called “sandbox” so as not to jump ahead of the rankings. No blog discussions, no ad ranking. At the same time, everyone except the owner of the site earns. It is clear that this approach is ineffective for commercial activities in the network.

We are sure, and practice proves that it is quite possible to engage in external promotion already after the first indexation of the resource. True, he must be fully prepared for this:

no errors;
open pages and available for indexing;
provided forms for receiving contacts;
no spam material.

The start of external SEO should begin with the publication of links that will lead the user to the main page of the site. For this, you need to develop a clear strategy. In order for the invention to be successful, you will have to “feel” the link profiles of your competitors. Free helpers will be of good help in this: megaindex “Comparison of link donors” or “External links”.

Your direct competitors are usually selected from the top ten search results and their performance is analyzed. The result is tabulated for ease of use.

In the same vein, it is necessary to audit the reference profiles of specific URLs and their anchor lists.

Five best ways to get quality links

To save financial costs, but create an attractive and completely natural control profile, you should turn to free services.

Our rating looks like this:

Feedback services. Good authority at https://irecommend.ru and https://www.otzyvua.net/. These sites are useful because both Google and Yandex include reviews from them in search results. Here is a real opportunity to make your site popular and at the same time increase its position in search results. Search engines will also help you access review services. You need to act like this: enter the domain name of the competitor you are interested in into the search bar, add the word “Reviews”: you have a list of the necessary sites in your hands. Megaindex “Analysis of competitors” is a good help. Here the algorithm of actions is as follows: in the “request” line you need to write the word “feedback”, and in the URL line – the address of any feedback service. The service will issue a list of its competitors, and you will receive the desired list of sites with reviews, where you can publish a link to your resource absolutely free.
Catalogues, ratings of online stores. Here again you will have to turn to search engines. Upon request “catalogs of online stores” or “ratings of online stores” you will receive a fairly significant list for analysis.
Company profiles and job search resources are well used for posting links to the site.
Forums of the relevant area and city web resources complete the rating.

Working with forums requires careful selection. Very often there are sites that are heavily spammed, or no one has visited them for a long time. There is zero positive effect from them, but they can cause harm.

Popular resources conduct a very strict selection of newcomers. Your claim to publish a link may be rejected. There are two ways to avoid a sad fate: buy a comment that includes your link from another promoted profile or start promoting your own.

The list of sites is exhausted, what to do?

You need to refer to the link profiles of your competitors. Help in this matter will be provided by the already familiar “External links” and “Comparison of link donors” from megaindex.

All sources from the TOP-5: review services, forums, catalogs and others. allow you to collect a general control profile, which will become the basis for further work.

Search engines have developed a certain attitude towards links. For example, Yandex prefers sites that use links from its services or that come from trusted, relevant sources. At the same time, the emphasis is on “relevant”, excluding those that can be classified as publicly available.

The quality of all types of links must be thoroughly checked. Checktrust.ru and ahrefs.com will cope with this task perfectly (this is not advertising).

But links are not a panacea. Internal optimization is required.

What will the blog do?

Any e-commerce business can benefit from having a blog. This increases the loyalty of users, improves behavioral indicators of CA, which ultimately has a positive effect on promotion in search engines. But only under one condition: the articles posted on the blog are useful and interesting primarily to the visitors of the resource.

Expert articles that allow you to evaluate the advantages of the product are especially popular.

Therefore, maximum attention should be paid to the textual content, having joined their specialists in their preparation. If you are not attracted to the creation of blog articles in a digital agency, you should ask the specialists a specific question. Otherwise, you will get a dummy blog, for which you will also be subject to serious sanctions from strict search engines. They will think that you intend to manipulate the search results in order to make your way to the TOP places.

Another danger may be lurking: an SEO specialist will advise you to make a blog on a resource where you plan to post links to the desired commercial pages. Motivating your position will be the fact that in this way you can increase the control weight and increase the chances in search results. It works, but there is a real possibility that it will slide down to the level of spam.

We strongly recommend defending your position: when preparing a blog, involve specialists from your company. This is the only way to create expert content that will really work for the company’s image.

Contract

Conclusion of the contract is mandatory, but do not rush to sign it. Read carefully first. You should not be touched to the core by verbal assurances “we will bring the site to the TOP-3”, “we will increase the target traffic by N%” and the like. Defend your right to read the contents of the document before signing. Then it will be too late to tear your hair out.

The following points should be fixed in the document:

keys that will be used to promote the resource;
your right to make changes and their specific description;
what will you get as a result of cooperation;
what works will be carried out (a complete list is prescribed in the additional agreement);
in which terms the agency fulfills its obligations. Here we are talking about all previous work aimed at achieving the expected result;
under what conditions the contract can be terminated early.

Be sure to request that it be spelled out how you will be able to monitor the activities of the hired web studio. The promotion of the site in search results is controlled by monitoring results. It is held weekly and daily, you must have access to it. This will make it possible to really assess how effective promotion is.

Job report

In order not to drown in a mass of beautiful pieces of paper, which should demonstrate the “diligence” of the SEO agency, before signing the contract, it is necessary to stipulate and write in the document:

real goals;
metrics by which they can be monitored;
periods for which reports will be taken.

This is the only way to get clear and realistic indicators of efficiency and effectiveness – KPI.

Otherwise, you will be presented with a large number of different graphs and charts that will demonstrate: the growth of traffic and positions in search results, bounce rates and depth of views. All this looks very convincing and clearly demonstrates the diligence of the performers, but in your particular case it is of little use. As a rule, all indicators grow on paper. In reality, business moves at a tiny pace or is completely stationary.

What KPIs are important for SEO

There are not many of them, they are quite clear and easy to calculate. The most significant include:

visibility in search results. Makes it clear how the site is visible when ranked by search engines. But the indicators are relative without comparison with the same data of competitors. Therefore, if you are presented with the bare numbers of visibility indices of 32 or 68 and claim that it cannot be better, cool their ardor by asking them to show what competing firms are doing;
quality of incoming traffic and its volume. Detailed information can be obtained from Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics;
what positions the resource occupies by keys. This indicator must be removed, but on the condition that the semantic core has already been agreed and cleaned of all garbage (word combinations with zero frequency are excluded);
how much is a visitor or CPC. To calculate it, it is necessary to divide the budget by the number of visitors. This is how you will know exactly how much one site visitor will cost;
CPA or how much it costs to convert. This indicator is very important, and it should be calculated as follows: divide the budget by the number of targeted user actions (conversion);
behavioral factors. Their importance in the promotion of commercial web resources is growing, so it is impossible not to take them into account;
as investment or ROI grows. It is calculated like this (income – expenses) / expenses * 100%. It is this indicator that will most clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the measures taken to promote the site.

Activities of agencies for the beauty of the picture

(Life hack! Ways to distort work results)

We have already written that web studios like to embellish the achieved results in order to dull the vigilance of the client and earn more.

This, of course, is not a crime, but still you should be careful. Here’s what you need to pay attention to:

the role of welcome requests in the promotion of the resource. The welcome request includes: the name of the company or the name of the product being promoted plus the name of the company: “allo phones”. But this type of query gets to the top positions by itself, without requiring promotion. But they have a very low frequency;
as zero requests advance. The business owner is offered to move zero requests “prices for quality booklets in Mykolaiv” instead of “booklets in Mykolaiv”. This is motivated by the fact that they have a chance to appear in search engine tips. And there, look, and the frequency will increase to ten demonstrations in one month. But, if the specialists carried out the correct optimization, then they are destined to occupy a place on the first page of search results. So is it worth paying for?;
how they cheat with traffic. To prove their performance, some companies resort to a trick: increasing the flow of visitors at the expense of a non-target audience. There are no conversions from him, but the numbers look great. It costs a penny, and you can withdraw a fairly substantial amount from the businessman;
as used in the promotion of lemma – invariant word forms. Seoshnyk prescribes several variants of the original expression. For example, “buy a chair” is a source, “buy a chair”, “I will buy chairs” are options. The search engine will return one result for all queries. The agency will take money from the customer for each option separately. On paper, everything will look smooth, but there is little point: sales will not show growth;
card issue. Some digital agencies are engaged in replacing concepts. Demonstrating the results of non-organic, but card issuance, which is just a nice ranking bonus. To cite this as a confirmation of the top positions of a commercial resource and to charge for it is immoral! Don’t be fooled by sweet promises, demand organic results;
Google Analytics metrics. They also play tricks with this, twisting them artificially, for example, through the utm spoofing service. In order not to become an easy prey for tricksters, make comparative checks of the results obtained from different accounting services;
availability of sales links and articles on the site. The team you hired includes the resource in the link exchange scheme. Another interpretation: articles with links to other businesses are published on your resource. They do this in order to kill two birds with one stone: to give importance to the resources of all their clients and to improve the ranking results. It makes no sense to promote someone else’s business, besides, it will ruin your reputation with search engines;
under the guise of SEO, they sell contextual advertising. The SEO studio promises: “In one day – in the TOP1”; and starts moving the context according to the approved keys. This makes it easier and cheaper for them to work: only five requests from the agreement are used. But the fact is that with properly conducted internal optimization, not only the top five selected for promotion, but also others with a lower frequency will get to the TOP positions. And this is more involved users.

How much should SEO promotion cost?

Understanding now in general terms the volume and complexity of the work, you will agree that you will not have to pay 5 thousand hryvnias and wait for an influx of visitors and a boom in trade. We advise you to seriously approach the selection of candidates, analyze their promises and real activities.

About the most important thing

So why, many do not believe in SEO?! We can say with confidence that the reason is trivially simple – no one seriously dealt with their resource, but actively developed others at the expense of a trusting client.

We have equipped you with the necessary knowledge so that you do not get into a similar situation. After all, you know:

A reliable specialist will not fuel your interest with unrealizable promises, but will work according to a pre-agreed plan.
Search engines will tell you which effective tools to use, and which are quite outdated and not working.
The contract is binding, and you have the right to control at any stage.
Don’t fall for gimmicks that supposedly will bring countless visitors and unprecedented conversion. You risk paying both reputation and money.
The “money for leads” scheme is not an option!
Reporting deadlines, format and content should be agreed in advance. Remember the basic markers that demonstrate convincing growth of your company.

Why leads will bring untargeted traffic

(Life hack! Fake (fake) customers when paying for “Leads”.)

A lead is understood as a specific action performed by the user after entering the site through one of the advertising channels. The scheme seems quite acceptable: only direct calls need to be paid for. But there is a secret here: bogus users. Under this general title hide “freelance artists” and call centers. They are busy with only one thing: they call to clarify the data about the product/service. But waiting for an order from them is pointless.

Why it is beneficial for a digital agency:

it is impossible to prove that the calls are coming from unreal customers;
call centers are paid significantly less than they receive from the client.

We wish all the success to those who are not afraid and are ready to steer their ship on the stormy sea of e-commerce.

And as a lifeline, we give a checklist.

Rated 5 out of 5

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