EDIT: Şirkette kötü konuşmuyorum. Şehrimde son derece gözden geçirilmiş ve saygın. Sanırım yatırımın doğru zamanda, doğru ekonomide doğru olan yatırımın bir parçası olduğumu tahmin ediyorum.
Herkese merhaba, Avustralya, Sydney’de küçük bir aile boyama işim var. Yılda yaklaşık 250 bin dolar – 300 bin dolar getiriyoruz ve üç kişilik bir ekibimiz var. Birkaç yıl önce pazarlama konusunda ciddi olmaya ve SEO’ya yatırım yapmaya karar verdim.
Sydney’de oldukça saygın bir SEO ajansı ile gittim. Onlara yıl için bütçemizi söyledim (yaklaşık 60 bin dolar) ve şimdi geriye dönüp baktığımda, muhtemelen bunu yapmamalıydım. Beni büyüklüğümüzde bir iş için sürdürülebilir bir plana yönlendirmek yerine, karşılayabileceğimi söylediklerimi azalttıklarını hissediyorum.
Dürüst olacağım – o zaman SEO hakkında fazla bir şey bilmiyordum. Ajansın yavaş ve istikrarlı bir şekilde büyümeme yardımcı olacağına inandım, ancak bunun yerine, gerçek bir sonuç olmadan yıl içinde tüm bütçeyi patlattık. Hatta kırılmaya bile yaklaşmadık. O zamandan beri, herhangi bir pazarlama için bütçemiz kaldı ve 60 bin dolarlık ortadan kaybolmuş gibi geliyor.
Daha yakın zamanlarda, deneyimimi paylaşmak için negatif bir Google incelemesi bıraktım ve ajansın CEO’su, incelememin iftira ettiğini söyleyerek bana yasal bir tehditle kişisel olarak e -posta gönderdi. Söz verdikleri her şeyi yaptıklarını ve ödediğimi aldığımı iddia ediyorlar.
Ben sadece kızgın, üzgün ve sinirliyim – daha büyük bir geri dönüş ya da en azından fark edilir bir büyüme bekliyordum. Yüksek umutlarım olmak yanlış mıydı? SEO aracılığıyla 60 bin doların benimki gibi küçük bir yerel işletmeyi önemli ölçüde büyüteceğini düşünmek naif miydi?
Bu noktalarla ilgili herhangi bir tavsiyeyi gerçekten takdir ediyorum: • SEO benim gibi küçük, yerel bir resim şirketi için doğru hareket bile mi? • Buradan nasıl yeniden inşa etmeliyim – ayakkabılarımda olsaydınız sonraki 5 bin dolar – 10 bin dolar nereden harcarsınız? • Yalın, akıllı bir SEO veya pazarlama stratejisi aslında esnaf tabanlı bir işletme için nasıl görünüyor? • Yasal olarak yapabileceğim bir şey var mı? Veya SEO şirketinin işlerini gerçekten düzgün yapıp yapmadığını kontrol etmenin herhangi bir yolu var mı?
Cevap veren herkese şimdiden teşekkürler – ileriye doğru daha iyi kararlar almak ve daha iyi kararlar almak için buradayım.
(Düşüncelerimi temizlemek için GPT ile sohbet etmek için sıralandı)
GÜNCELLEME: Şirket bana 6 aylık ücretsiz bir plan verdi. Ama eğer ilk kez teslim etmediler, bu noktada hiçbir şey beklemiyorum…
SEO ranking is promised to no one. And if you ever hire another SEO agency that promises they can get you top ranking, run away as fast as you can. Any agency promising that is a con artist. Google, not a SEO agency, decides what ranks.
This is a very decent SEO budget – and its awful to read your story.
There are 4 predominant schools of thought in SEO – or principles or foundations or points of observation/PoV – and you can see them here – where we have content SEOs, Tech SEO, and then “regular” SEO or r/SEO
For example – a lot of “on-site” SEOs and content SEOs write at companies with a lot of authority – especially in topical authority and lots of established topics. And these SEOs feel that every time they post something, iit goes to 1st place after x days and they are pure SEO magic. Dont get me wrong – there are amaizng SEO writers, who do keyword research but this isn’t how Google really works – its too thin on knolwedge.
Secondly, there’s MacroSEO – which is about creating a web infrastrucutre for content and these users are keyword agnostic and look at things like total traffic. IF you take a massive site with authority and cleanup up the “basics” – you can see a massive increase in SEO.
If you’re really good at Technical SEO – you can build a growth hacking engine. The problem is at the macro-SEO side – where the SEOs dont have a full enough understanding of the system and put too much emphasis on a small set of levers.
What you need – and unfortunately this means arming yourself with a lot of knowledge is acutally mostly contained withint the Google SEO Starter Guide.
SEO is fundamentally based on PageRarnk (you can ask any LLM about PageRank) – and thats the basis for things like Backlinks, DA, Authority, Topical Authority etc.
SEO is also about content and contents relevance. Things like Page Titles, the document name (aka “slug”), meta-data like meta-descriptions, schema, internal links are all about relevance and shaping icoming authority into rank positions
SEO is really this: How would I get in front of my customer?
* Are they looking for me?
* Are they looking for someone else that looks like me
* What will I say?
* How will I say it
SEO = Your business online. So – here is a list – give yourself 1 point for each item listed. Add your points up. You need at least 100% to have enough information to possibly get started with SEO. What % did you get?
Hi mate. I run a trades business myself (built from scratch using SEO) in Auckland. Our markets are fairly similar.
Not sure about legalities, but I can definitely advise you on SEO.
Send me a message if you’re keen – I’ll spend some time for you for free just because I hate this kind of story and want to help you recover, once I’ve formulated a basic strategy I’m happy to jump on a quick call with you and explain the best steps to go forward
SEO is “a right move” for companies of any size, but SEO is highly unpredictable and results might sometimes take years or not come at all.
In my opinion, with $60k, there should be multiple strategies and “plan B’s” – what exactly does the firm have done? Unfortunately sometimes “highly reputable” SEO’s can just sell overpriced basics without actually putting much effort into it.
Leaving a negative review just because you didn’t get the rankings you wanted is a little bit of a dick move if the company did what they promised – but then again, with 60k you would expect at least some results. Feel kind of bad for you, if you want I can take a quick look at your site and see if there’s something you could be doing with the rest of your budget.
Sorry to hear about your experience. Agencies like them make the industry look bad.
$60k and no results is brutal. You’re not alone though, I mean a leaner, smarter rebuild is possible
Aussie SEO here. 60k/yr is a lot for SEO in Australia. We don’t have any clients on SEO packages that high and have worked with some very large businesses with thousands of employees. It does depend on the scope of work that was agreed on, however.
Without knowing what area your business is targeting (local area vs the whole city), the best bang for your buck often comes from Local SEO, which should cost you < 1k/mth.
Sometimes all the SEO and budget can only get you so far. A small painting business in Sydney competing with multiple large well known authoritative painting businesses, online marketplace aggregators that often take up the top slots, and multiple other small painting businesses that may have more authority then you, and after all that there’s not a lot of room on the first page unless you offer some unique services the others aren’t doing. It’s possible they did a decent job, but the cards were already stacked against you.
I want to assume of lot of the budget went to PPC, which is how you can compete with the big guys. If it didn’t provide a big return then sometimes it’s not about web marketing, and instead about the business itself, how many customers there actually are to go around, and if they even have money due to the economy. Or the SEO could have been shit.
Been down that road. My advice is if its small business, download the tools and do it yourself. Agency was $2K/m, Semrush account is $150. I get more done in a day than they did in a week.
Was SEO all you did, or…?
Thats actually very sad and this industry is mostly bells and whistles due to dogshit agencies like the one you worked with.
If you’re up for it, I’d love to at least steer you in the right direction or even look if SEO would even make sense for you. Send me a chat whenever you want and we’ll talk about it.
Im also quite curious to see where they actually spent the 60k but its probably gonna be some super low quality backlinks.
I’m in Australia… did they actually get you ranking, top 3 for your main 10+ keywords? I’m not talking about your suburb either.
SEO is 12-18 months imo before you see results. I always say this, you are in for the long haul and you need to review costings at every stage.
90% of people think you smack a few blogs up and that’s it… it’s not
Well SEO has been dying for months after everything has become AI results. Paying someone to improve your content is like paying someone to help train Google’s AI to summarize the content they steal from you better. Unless you improve your domain authority through backlinks, add more landing pages with more traffic, or trim down your sales funnel, you’re not really improving ROI, you’re simply improving metadata Google now mostly ignores now that it has its AI brain doing more of the heavy lifting.
If $25k would’ve paid to my team.
The story would be different. Sorry for your loss, man