So a matter of a few days into 2008 and from an SEO perspective it’s getting interesting already with a couple of things this week worth a mention. i wrote only a week or so ago about SEO scare tactics and the hardsell that invariably follows big money around, and SEO is huge business these days

One of our clients received a call from a London SEO company‘s sales team, (not the people on the end of that link ) following a request for an approximate quotation for a Google No 1 placement on their mildly competitive search terms.

The saleperson, and that’s what he was, although calling himself an SEO consultant clearly didn’t have a scooby, and proceeded to try to scare and hardsell our client by:

* Slating our recent and (still ongoing, successful) work on their site (and our own brand new website) over the phone.

Anyone trying to use Google Toolbar Pagerank scare tactics is clearly clueless, it has little to do with the real pagerank system G use to work the SERPs, and lags by about 3 months. It’s there for idiots like this to look at, who can’t assess how good a site is by it’s content and structure.

..Yes, well… …that will be why they (our Client) have gone from not being listed at all, anywhere, to Google second page in the competitive Real Estate search terms we’re targeting, and we are hoping we will have breached the first page by early February at the latest.

We cannot of course guarantee this, but having gone from Position 168 on their toughest keywords, to pos 11-19 (11 was the highest so far, late last night – 19 the current position, so we are fairly confident we’ll be on that all important front page for their hardest keywords pretty soon.

This company then quoted our Client £5000 GBP, 50% upfront, and a year’s work, for a (not guaranteed) front page placement. Thus far we haven’t even billed €1000 (Euros) yet and have so far been active on their SEO for just over 8 weeks. ..Clearly we’re not charging enough or way over-delivering

What is really funny about this, is that I know this particular company have made great use of doorway pages with some of their clients, and currently have one client in particular at the top of their searches using this method.

Hahaha. They have engineered themselves into a situation where they (or rather their clients) are vulnerable to, if not at the mercy of a well-informed spam report and yet they hire pushy sales types to slag off other companies honest ethical work to get their next sale.

There is also another interesting and very funny SEO dodgy tricks type-situation ongoing that I would love to write about at length, but am going to wait to see how it all pans out before doing so, to give them a chance to redeem themselves morally and ethically first. …If not all the juicy details, screenshots etc will be forthcoming shortly, and it’s a funny one, I promise

And one last inside tip, (non SEO related for a change) one of our clients is about to start publishing his secret recipes monthly on his new Catering in Ibiza blog, this client is one of the world’s great chefs, and has a diamond-studded celebrity client list, check it out La Grande Bouffe Catering in Ibiza Blog