Hi Monitor welcome!

I think you should try to ask him what he's exactly doing to improve your website. To start seeing ranking results on a new website, it generally takes anywhere from 8-12 months.

You're on the right track as far as asking why basic improvements have not been made to your website, such as proper titles, descriptions etc. This is called on-page optimization, without having the basics down in this section, you can't really expect to see great, rapid results.

My suggestion to you would be, question your SEO and in the mean time, try to focus more on broadening your internet exposure. Get yourself into RELEVANT directories and related sites. (I know this is a bit broad, but its a start)

Drop him, drop the links, start reading up on the subject, then pick an SEO within driving distance......

Thank you very much for your answers.

I suggested to that guy to keep a log of what he is doing (as we programmers keep). He said that in this job (SEO) you can't do such thing.
So for the moment he can't (or don't want) to show his progress.

I don't know much about SEO, but I agree with you that he should optimize at least the title of the pages that I made few years ago. Or... maybe I am such a good SEO that my pages don't need further optimization :)

I looked a little bit to hire a SEO but for the moment I spent all my energy (energy= money and time) in the development of another software.
Therefore, this pet project will stay like that for a while until the other project will bring money for investment.

Maybe I will continue to look for a new SEO who wants to collaborate with me.

[edited by: Monitor at 6:33 pm (utc) on Jan. 17, 2008]

[edited by: caveman at 8:25 pm (utc) on Jan. 17, 2008]
[edit reason] Removed specifics, per TOS [/edit]

He's shafting you.

Dump him - and check that he hasn't rebuilt affiliations etc to go to his bank instead of yours.

You are asking sensible questions, your site is established. If you can't afford SEO - and many cannot - then you equally cannot afford to be ripped off by shysters.

Keep learning, keep asking questions, keep high standards, and don't expect to get rich quick - but do expect to be gradually getting there.

And dump the link exchange scheme before it loses you all the progress you've made!

You are clearly being scammed. Tell your "SEO guy" to log every change he makes, new links added, etc. into a spreadsheet with dates and send it to you on a weekly/monthly basis, or more if you need. I record every single change I make when optimizing. How else would you know what is working and what is not? Find a local SEO to help out!

can't log work done

Absolute BS. Dump him. I've been in this business a long time and it's very sensible for a client to want a breakdown of what has been done.

Granted, results can take time, but he should be able to show you what has been done and from the sounds of it, the most basic things such as titles, page content, etc. hasn't been touched.

Thanks to all.
I really thank you!

I already removed that 'link exchange' page from my web site.
I also started to remove Google ads from my site. They were destroying the 'professional' aspect of my web site.

Hope that next week I can write a full help/manual for my software. Probably there are thousand of keywords in a manual.
----
Edit: I have found the email address of that guy in a list with SEO 'experts' involved in fake link exchange. He used my web site to point links to other websites (and probably to make money).

[edited by: Monitor at 11:07 pm (utc) on Jan. 17, 2008]

Hi:

I also had a similar problem from a guy in India claiming to be an seo expert. He has not done what I asked him to do and now is demanding I pay him through paypal only. I have asked him to send a list of what he has done and sites he has submitted to and all he sends me is his email and I'm supposed to sift through all his emails to find the ones that related to seo? And if I don't pay him he will do "negative SEO" on my site. Has anyone heard of this and can it really be done? What a nightmare. Is there a Better Business Bureau in India? All I have is an email address on this guy.

> claiming to be an seo expert
If he is an expert then you don't need to ask a report from him.
You should see a nice increase in number of sales or visitors.
If not, then he is a fake.

> And if I don't pay him he will do "negative SEO" on my site
Can't you just cut his ftp account/access to your site and forget about him?

> All I have is an email address on this guy

Ask him about his company name and his company bank account number. If he is really running a business he should have such thing.

I would recommend you to drop this 'relation' today, no matter how he threatens you.

[edited by: caveman at 8:08 pm (utc) on Mar. 4, 2008]
[edit reason] Removed comment per TOS #4, #12 [/edit]

PS: Try to learn some SEO by yourself. First I thought it is complicated, but actually is not a big deal.

And if I don't pay him he will do "negative SEO" on my site
Can't you just cut his ftp account/access to your site and forget about him? Yes, but we are concerned he may have downloaded some files or made copies etc.

> All I have is an email address on this guy

He is demanding we pay him via paypal to this email account!

> Ask him about his company name and his company bank account number. If he is really running a business he should have such thing.

He said he is not a company, just a group of seo experts! I only have his email address. Can he really do negative seo?

[edited by: caveman at 8:24 pm (utc) on Mar. 4, 2008]
[edit reason] Removed specifics per TOS #9, #12 [/edit]

Drop him like a hot potato! Guy sound unproffesional, unscrupilous
and a few other "uns" that I cant think of right now.

Had a similar experience with a site designer a few years back and it took
6 months to pry it out of his hands clean it up and get it back on line

As suggested above get some one close by if possible. I like to be eye ball to
eye ball if I can. Good luck!...KF

> He is demanding we pay him via paypal to this email account!

Then pay him ONLY if he did whatever you agreed.

> I'm supposed to sift through all his emails to find the ones that related to seo?

It is not your business to dig in his email pile.
HE must show you a professional report with what he accomplished.
Don't waste time in argues. Ask him the report. Ignore ANY discussion/email with him until you get your report.

I wouldn't work with such a SEO, not even for free.

You're being screwed over big time!

And if I don't pay him he will do "negative SEO" on my site...
Can't you just cut his ftp account/access to your site and forget about him?
Yes, but we are concerned he may have downloaded some files or made copies etc.

he can only do "negative SEO" while he's still got access to your files. so you need to cut off his FTP. if you're worried about him sticking files on your site then make sure there's no .htaccess file lurking anywhere and nothing in the cgi-bin. make sure there's nothing you don't know about outside of the root directory as well.
best thing to do is scrub the whole lot and restore from a back-up. but he's probably all talk anyway, like 99% of the scam artists. probably hasn't got the brains to do anything serious.

Read up on SEO and do it yourself.

If SEO wasn't simple there'd be a lot of people back on the market as burger flippers.

You can do it, piece of cake.

Thanks for the suggestions. Now, he has gone to our website to get our customer list and has emailed all of them stating we are cheats and we don't pay them. So, now I have to do clean up control with our customers. Here is a portion of his email. "It will help us a lot if you can try and convince the company to pay us the 600USD. or Just in order to punish cheaters like ***** we are going to start negative SEO on all their client websites . Negative SEO WILL NOT BRING ANY TRAFFIC TO WEBSITES . That will be a loss of business and sales. Hope you do realize your website also is included in the list."

any suggestions of what to do now?

surely this is blackmail. sounds like a police matter to me.

any suggestions of what to do now?

Wow. Send an email to your users informing them that you were the victim of a hacker attack trying to extort money from you. Change all your passwords and file a criminal complaint if you have the grounds.

If he really launches an effective negative SEO campaign there's not much you can do about it. He'll probably be as bad at that as he was at SEO in the first place.

Any suggestions of what to do now?

Where is this SEO located? If in the United States, they are in violation of quite a few laws if I'm not mistaken. If outside the United States, good luck as it will all depend on the laws in that country and in many instances they won't be in your favor. :(

He is in India. And since he has no company name we cannot contact the BBB in India.

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news but I'm almost certain there isn't much you can do at this point other than your own internal damage control. It will be a lesson learned for yourself and those who are reading along. Good luck with the cleanup.

don't give up on the police just because he's in india. contact the indian police. they have such things as email and telephones these days, you know.
and 99% of indians speak english better than we do.

all you have to do is make it clear to the guy that they're actually involved (even if it's in the smallest way), and then he'll no doubt forget all about his piddly 600 quid.

1. Do a Google search for its email address.
2. Send him an email from a different email address pretending that you are a client ready to pay $5000 for one month of SEO. Ask him a real bank account or phone number.

Good idea. I do have his email address. I'd like to find his IP address.

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news but I'm almost certain there isn't much you can do at this point other than your own internal damage control.

Oh sure there's things you can do and it falls under creating reputation management problems. For instance, like I've done with a couple of my posts about certain companies I had issues with, my posts now come up as the #2 listing in G for their company name and a few other searches.

also pot his email address in scam email lists

Where do i do that?

I don't remember.
I also had a similar problem with a SEO from India.
When things started to be fishy I looked for email address and I have found it in a list of scamers. It looks like he ran a lottery scam before.