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An SEO scam: $62k later

tinloof.com

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Re: An SEO scam: $62k later

#31

Post by somedude895 »

tacker2000 wrote: post #15

SEO is basically snake oil. You try some things that someone in that dark corner over there tells you to do and have no idea if the black box called Google will rank you higher or not. Results are not instantly or even actually measureable. And in the end you spend cash and have no idea if it helped or not. Basically, like someone else in this thread already said, SEO is best if you are not doing it actively, but whe…

> SEO is basically snake oil

Once you get to the point where you're simply trying to eke out a handful more visits a month. There are some fundamentals that absolutely need to be in order that can have a massive impact on your success. Stick to the 80/20 rule and only do the 20.

Re: An SEO scam: $62k later

#32

Post by DonHopkins »

blitzar wrote: post #11
robtaylor wrote: post #9

Surely this is some link bait as an SEO play? A company that says "Tinloof is a technical SEO agency that conducts audits, and implements the necessary optimizations on websites and ecommerces to rank higher on Google and other SERPs" and puts out this content would be shooting itself in the foot reputationally otherwise? Surely....!?

Nice plot twist ... they were scammed by themselves.

They should have named names.

Re: An SEO scam: $62k later

#33

Post by spaceman_2020 »

> If this is what it takes to rank on a search engine, then there's something wrong with the search engine itself.

This is precisely the problem, not likely the SEO agency itself.

I used to run a content marketing agency (not a SEO agency). Early on, I quickly learned that there were two kinds of agencies that dealt with content: SEO agencies that focused on rankings and traffic, and content agencies that focused on creating content and capturing quality leads.

I was deeply uncomfortable with the SEO aspect of content. Most of it was churning out trash and loading up the domain with paid-for backlinks. But it did show results - at least in traffic and rankings.

For most businesses, however, this traffic would never really convert into paying customers. The kind of customer who searches for "website development" wouldn't be able to afford an agency like Tinloof.

You'll get much better results if you just focus on content that solves highly targeted user problems.

Forget keywords. Focus on credibility.

Re: An SEO scam: $62k later

#34

Post by robertlagrant »

abatilo wrote: post #25

After about 2 years, I somehow started getting Google traffic to one of my websites. It wasn't much, maybe 1k to 2k views a month. I didn't touch the website at all in those 2 years and when I started getting traffic from Google, I decided that maybe I should setup the Google search console SEO best practices. I went through their entire checklist and my traffic went to flat 0. I scored a perfect 100 across every cat…

The guidance was probably written by an internal Google equivalent of the agency in the article, not a Google engineer who knows how everything works.

Re: An SEO scam: $62k later

#35

Post by logifail »

folbec wrote: post #19
tacker2000 wrote: post #15

SEO is basically snake oil. You try some things that someone in that dark corner over there tells you to do and have no idea if the black box called Google will rank you higher or not. Results are not instantly or even actually measureable. And in the end you spend cash and have no idea if it helped or not. Basically, like someone else in this thread already said, SEO is best if you are not doing it actively, but whe…

"One-Half the Money I Spend for Advertising Is Wasted, But I Have Never Been Able To Decide Which Half" https://quoteinvestigator.com/2022/04/11/advertising/

> "One-Half the Money I Spend for Advertising Is Wasted..."

I once worked with a small company where essentially 100% of their PPC spend was wasted. Not half wasted, not mostly wasted, but completely wasted.

The marketing manager was determined to spend her budget though, for fear of losing it, so month after month she tinkered with keywords, rewrote ad copy, and the ads ran and ran, sometimes people clicked, views were tracked, but there were no conversions.

You're thinking maybe the conversion tracking was broken? It wasn't.

A handful of people searched for the company's name, and they did convert. The company ranked #1 across all search engines for its own name, so why they were running PPC ads on their name was somewhat of a mystery. At least it proved the PPC tracking was working... and proved the PPC campaigns were an utter failure :/

Watching $thousands being tossed away like that was quite sad. In one fractious meeting I suggested that it might be more effective to stop the ads, and stand on a busy street corner handing out the cash and asking passers-by to buy the product. It couldn't have been any less effective...

Re: An SEO scam: $62k later

#36

Post by input_sh »

> We hope that this circus will eventually come to an end, and search engines will have to either improve their algorithms or people will lean more on solutions like ChatGPT, lessening their reliance on these engines.

Do they really think ChatGPT is gonna do any better at generating leads? The same ChatGPT that provides fuck all links to the outside web?

It's like they recognise one scam and jump head first straight into the next one.

Re: An SEO scam: $62k later

#37

Post by Cthulhu_ »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #33

> If this is what it takes to rank on a search engine, then there's something wrong with the search engine itself. This is precisely the problem, not likely the SEO agency itself. I used to run a content marketing agency ( not a SEO agency). Early on, I quickly learned that there were two kinds of agencies that dealt with content: SEO agencies that focused on rankings and traffic, and content agencies that focused on…

That's the gist of it. SEO is quantity over quality, you may get plenty of visits but it'll be low value; bots, people idly or accidentally clicking links, etc. Not potential customers, unless your website's primary revenue stream is ad impressions, in which case it doesn't matter much as long as they're views that the advertisers will pay for.

Re: An SEO scam: $62k later

#38

Post by TheFragenTaken »

tacker2000 wrote: post #15

SEO is basically snake oil. You try some things that someone in that dark corner over there tells you to do and have no idea if the black box called Google will rank you higher or not. Results are not instantly or even actually measureable. And in the end you spend cash and have no idea if it helped or not. Basically, like someone else in this thread already said, SEO is best if you are not doing it actively, but whe…

It's not pure snake oil. You can make reasonable assumptions on any black box by controlling the input, and monitoring the output.

...but it's such a terrible industry, that needs major disruption.

Re: An SEO scam: $62k later

#39

Post by debesyla »

abatilo wrote: post #25

After about 2 years, I somehow started getting Google traffic to one of my websites. It wasn't much, maybe 1k to 2k views a month. I didn't touch the website at all in those 2 years and when I started getting traffic from Google, I decided that maybe I should setup the Google search console SEO best practices. I went through their entire checklist and my traffic went to flat 0. I scored a perfect 100 across every cat…

I had similar experiences in my self-help blog. I wasn't sure was it indeed due to "optimisations" or just a coincidence... :upside_down_smile_emoji:

Re: An SEO scam: $62k later

#40

Post by [deleted] »

cj wrote: post #3

1) SEO works best when you create real content targeted at real users 2) SEO works best when its not your end goal 3) Google knows this and is smarter than your SEO agency. Ditch the agency and simply create legitimate content your users find valuable and google will rank it. It might take more than 12 months for everything to rank and pay off. But that's life. Google Ads exists for people looking for immediate resul…

[deleted]
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