semalt.com

My review of my wesbite. If you need quick fix. Semalt is way to go...

I am a verified business that let semalt manage my website for fullSEO service at $800/mo for 1 year. I give 3 stars for the reason is I got what I asked for which was back links and a quick fix solution after a failed 1 year management from a previous local company. Semalt CSR was excellent. The SEO service was sub par for the amount of $$$ invested. I have written a lengthy review. And I am sure they will want to rebut, but what they really need to do is have a sit down and restructure of how they do fullAUTO white glove seo service.Upon initial audit, some changes were made. 5 categories articles written, 7 pages updated, Semalt.com uploaded some outdated wp code that caused my pages to format all crazy. Sadly they did not even take the time to look at the change they made to see what they did. No big deal, but took a little time for me to fix. Bad time of year to have to reformat pages while customer traffic is ramping up. Just made it look like a bad site for half a day. Sad thing was I specially addressed to let me upload so this would not happen. They do prefer to work via FTP upload vs actually going into the site and editing through up to date WP editor. What I can tell you I know as fact. What they will not tell you upfront is that AutoSEO is for single page. And that FullSEO is really not the full website, just the agreed pages / categories addressed in the first run. So in the beginning you feel like hey they are going to address 5 -10 pages a month, but really any other website work ends there from the initial audit. They do not work on 5-10 pages ever again. Even when you suggest they might need a little tweaking. And yes I watched how many times the user entered the website and edited the pages. Conclusion....I got what I asked for. I wanted short term gains with massive back links. I got exactly this. Some of the links are sketchy, but it is done, I asked for it, and I will move forward. Yes, ranking has improved from the initial start. Yes there are some really specific terms that rank on first page if the 5 people looking for that term type that in, but for the most part, the 5 key terms we worked on and promoted, the highest raking term moved to 2nd page. And we all know if you ain't first you're last.I made 3 link sites myself, and those rank higher than semalt does for our agreed search keywords with little to no traffic and no back links.Organic traffic did improve on google analytics, but it is hard to say how much of that is bot, and how much of that is real as when you filter out all the referral sites mentioned in the other reviews, you really do not have anything different prior to semalt management when comparing start to finish. PPC vs Organics is the same percentage. Upon reading more about backlinks and importance. I realized that since my niche travels in a specific way, the link building system that was being made for my site was not good for long term SEO gains. I was in the old mindset of search ranking. More links more links more links. This is probably the very reason why my smaller link sites were ranking higher for same competing terms. So I would say that my website hit its peak with the plan that was made. I will focus on content rich blogging as Semalt's own SEO tech suggested 1 year later, after $9600 invested, because that is the real backbone of this niche along with YouTube videos. Sadly, I asked about a bunch of times of YouTube importance in the past and someone at Semalt gave me bad advice on that -not relevant to search term ranking. So maybe they have some old SEO thinkers on board making decisions, really not sure as I only talk to a lovely customer service rep who has always helpful and prompt in answering emails throughout the entire period. I have only positive things to say about her. Elena was wonderful.The only questions that avoided answers when pressed multiple times were specifically addressing their bot program and Wordfence Firewall blocking blacklisted IP addresses. That question would never be addressed no matter how many times I asked it.My suggestions for Semalt to become an effective SEO company... Semalt focus primarily on links and their bot. How to make the architect of pages help best with their bots and its output to modify google analytics. What they do not offer at this time with their fullseo package is a Social Media part of SEO service as that is a key component of the new ranking systems, and you can't charge more for the service. $800/month to run a bot is plenty. Really not hard to automate. I do it now with a few programs. nijapinner, tweetboss, viraltag. That will cover the core -- Facebook, twitter, pintrest. If you add tailwind to the mix you could also cover Instagram. Social media is vital to authority this day and age. You can not ignore it, you can not make it an extra service. Semalt does not use webmaster tools / analytics at any point in managing your website. I don't even know how to express my disappointment. The very search engine your are trying to stack in your favor, semalt wont even use those tools to help you gauge what they are doing. Look at the real analytics. That's the very thing you are trying to persuade into to rank higher. the overall site health and authority. I think semalt only focus is on the key search term thing, they never looks at the health of the site for domain authority, speed of site, mobile compatibility, etc outside of the initial audit. Websites are fluid in nature, changing every month. Have to watch all of it every month. That is what SEO Search Engine Optimization is a bout about. Not just key terms and bot crawlers. Positive false reporting....I suggest always show the decided keyword ranking first on your report. whether good bad or ugly. be honest and upfront. What they provide is a random key word term ranking report that doesn't do a client a bit of good when the 5-10 things they wanted are not being addressed every month. Get rid of the clutter non relevant search term reports. Honestly, if they don't show up in google trends, what is the point? There were so many terms that I know no one looks up it being reported as #1 spots on google. It was becoming comical at best. Then there is 20 different ways out of the 100 report to show ranks for something that I am not even promoting. Yet 1 way to to show what I wanted promoted. Just seems like a big coverup and masking of what needed to be done. Website health....When you say you are going to fix all errors, do so. My site had over 400 errors for 3 years and counting. And then the latest uploaded sitemap nightmare, +1000 more = 1400x 404 error's and semalt never followed up on it 2 months later. Not at any time was there 0-10x 404 errors. I kept getting spam mail about my site having all these 404 errors from other SEO companies, and I addressed it many times with Semalt. It was never fixed.Adwords importance... Paid, proven click through, search terms....if a client is using adwords, link all that to his analytics. Literally takes like 8 mins at the most. Use PPC as a guide to understand how users are coming into the site. Then use that to make those PPC terms organic ranking. Its not managing PPC. It is using the PPC data to manage the organics. I had 7 years of data.... No one took the time to look not once. It is not beyond the scope of initial review. Just do it. And I BEGGED them to use that data.Compare PPC vs organic--monthly Mine is the same ratio as before. How is this considered an overall win for a website? Yea... went from page 7 to page 2 for a term but.... If you not on page 1 in top 3 spots.... its considered a loss. You know this. If a term is not ranking better for organics then the SEO is not working.Niche background relevance .....give an honest review of a niche and then build SEO that way. It took 1 year for semalt.com tech to realize that blogging was the main driving force for my niche. Something that was never addressed. Lost time. paid for that lost time.Web site authority....ask and address competitors status. --monthly Address Domain Authority. --monthly When your website is ranked lower than 5 of its competitors, this is a problem. Address referrals.... Where are they coming from, why are they coming? Are they good for the business. Is it bad links, or is it just a bot that you need to filter out. semalt added these website links. I run a business associated with kids.... KIDS>>>> ages 5-12..... How many adult websites did your bot link to my site ? Do I really need to tell everyone? Is this really the links I need? At least make the links somewhat related. Your tech guys super lazy with my site. search google trends.... search term for past 5 years worldwide.... All traffic comes from USA, North America. Not one site on these links comes from there. and this is just he first 20 that I disavowed. I haven't found a USA link yet. Only 50K of them to sort through. Time = loss chances....client can never gain time lost. And time lost compounds revenue lost. And quite possible even miss window to become top driving force for a niche. So some small business, not about the money, but about the time. So mistakes like "oh we should have been blogging more than focusing on back links" really have an impact that can not be fixed quickly if you can only add 2-3 relevant articles a month before it looks spammy. Literally missed 24 articles to add to my domain authority. I paid for that mistake in real money and lost time. So this is my overall review of the service provided to me. It's a honest review and I am sorry to my CSR as it has no reflection on the work she did. I truly just don't understand what this company thinks there are doing for websites in the long run.

Date of experience: Oct 26, 2018