Local linkup... Beware!

[cal_dood]

Last friday, I had a phone call from a lad at this company... He offered to get my website up on number 1 on google, for £25 a month and I didn't have to pay a penny unless he could prove it...
I liked the sound of it, so I said let me have a think, and ill get back to him...

I looked about, and to be honest, I don't really need any extra work, so I decided not to bother for now.

Anyway, another lad, "jamie" rang back yesterday, and I said I'm not too worried at the moment, the website is there more for the "image" really, to look abit more professional.

He kept nagging on and on saying "you were dead keen on friday blahh,blaahh, blaahhh" until eventually I just put the phone down, since I was quite busy.

So I put my phone away, and left it.

I came back to my phone to see loads of missed calls and a voice mail, here's what he said

"Hi callum, its jamie from local linkup, listen mate, I find it abit embarrassing that you had to put the phone down on me like that, Its obvious there that once I ask you for some payment details(which he did after I'd politely said I'm not interested) you put the phone down on me because your too weak to say no, and obviously when I rang back, you were too weak to answer. I know your looking for the work coz you put an advert up on hotfrog the other day, but if your not looking for work, I'm quite happy to take down all these free adverts on google and such. Like I said mate, your obviously too weak to just say no your not interested, and you put the phone down, and I find it a little bit embarrassing that a so-called business man like yourself would have to do that, but never mind"

I was fuming so I rang back to give him what for, but he didn't answer, but it was about 5 so I thought ill ring back tomorrow, again no reply... I sent him a txt instead, letting him know what I thought of him, since he was on a mobile...

But I thought I'd let you guys know, so if you have them ringing up asking for money, don't you dare hang up on them... Haha.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9360 using Tapatalk

 

[lynneinjapan]

Well, after hearing that I bet you're dying to call them back and apologise for your terrible behaviour and beg them to take you on after all!

Someone could really do with some training in customer relations...

 

[cal_dood]

Lmao, I can't wait to join, where do I sign...

Sent from my BlackBerry 9360 using Tapatalk

 

[russty]

Had calls from this company in the past and stayed clear of them after reading about them on another forum.

Local Linkup - UK Business Forums

 

[PB1]

I did sign up with them and stupidly paid about £300 for them to provide a SEO service for me. The deal was you then only pay when your website is on page 1 of google. they capped the monthly payments at around £30 and sent reports showing which days and times and key words were producing the first page result. however whenever I tried the same keywords at different times my website was nowhere near page 1. After a few months I cancelled it and put it down to experience. a couple of months after that the husband of a customer of mine offered to help me with some SEO as he was trying to get into this line of work and wanted to build a portfolio of sites. We spent a couple of hours working on my website and within a week i was getting lots of page 1 hits on google. In return I gave them a couple of hours of my time swapping light fittings. So SEO does work, but it can be done much more simply and cheaply with a bit of local help!

 

[robsparky1975]

Good thread,i get more calls from these type of firms than work/enquiries,and im sick of them,just say no thanks to each and every one of them and hang up,thats all i do now.and especially dont give out your bank details over the phone!!!!i have been trading on my own since april(website too)and what i have learnt quick is that word of mouth and the quality of your work and service/aftercare is the biggest marketing tool.

 

[Specialist]

Yeah: Watch out for Touch local too: Same sort of BS & they don't deliver either.

 

[robsparky1975]

had a firm call me offering for me distribtion of my cards in a tesco superstore for £15 a week,hang on a minute thats £720 a year.cheaper to do the yellow pages,in fact i spoke to a builder who says he pays £1000 a year for his and gets very little work,people get confused as too much selection,i emailed a builder,he got back to me,1st job almost complete and he says will use me again so best email ive ever sent and free!!!!!!and done the same with a heating firm and picking up work from them.

 

[1shortcircuit]

I was fuming so I rang back to give him what for, but he didn't answer, but it was about 5 so I thought ill ring back tomorrow, again no reply...

I had a similar situation with someone calling "From the Police" Told me there was no need to get an attitude and hung up on me. I wouldn't have been so bothered but I was being polite!!! I called him back flat out for about 5 minutes after that lol

Internet warriors I can normally deal with because all they are is a bunch of words typed hidden behind a PC monitor, the difference with these phone warriors is you can hear the tone in their voice and I'll be honest I want to smash their ruddy faces in :90:

And breeeeeeathe lol

 

[Andyfm]

Since I put my mobile number in the TPS service, a lot of these calls have stopped, and if they do ring, a quick reminder that they shouldn`t be calling the number otherwise they get reported normally stops them in their tracks

 

[Kevin Smithers]

HI everybody, I am new here and just wanted to add my few pence on this subject.

I actually came across this website while trying to find some feedback about Local Link Up as one of my clients was ripped of by them recently, I am actually a web designer and unlike most include SEO FREE to all my clients so when I come across companies that charge huge amounts of money for SEO it actually disgusts me.

SEO is key to all website no matter how big or small the company BUT there are some website that you can literally just not help no matter how much good SEO you do and I am talking about site which have 100 or less visits a month, to get these high rankings in the search engines then you have to turn to black hat tactics like paid for back links and automated traffic.

Lets say you have a website with reasonable traffic 600 visits a month + but you find yourself on pages 4,5,6 ...... of Google and I say Google because thats the one everybody it bothered about as this is the one most people use (Unless you can not familiar with a computer then you use Bing as thats InterNet Explorers default) so what can you do to get your website to page 1?

Well if you have searched for SEO then you will find that everybody wants page 1 and most SEO companies guarantee you page 1 for your keywords BUT they are not talking about single keywords here they are talking combinations which include your geographical location, so Electricians Bristol, Electricians Swindon, Electricians Bath would all be keyword combinations they would guarantee for a page 1 listing but to be honest you can do this yourself, what they can not guarantee but say they can is a high listing for electrician.

Single keywords are much harder to get on the first page of Google and your website would need to have lots or organic traffic for this, so hits from people searching, back links, direct traffic this does not include paid for adverts and the time scale can be 2 years + to achieve this for new domains and a little faster for domains over 3 years old.

But why would you want to appear on the first page of Google for a single keyword? well for most small business's you don't you want to be found for your geographical location, lets say I type into Google Electrician and I find your website as the first result, what are the chances of you actually being a Electrician in my area? well next to none but if I typed in Electrician Swindon then I am pretty much guaranteed that the first result would be in my area.

Website like blogs, forums and shops want to be found for single keywords.

So what are the tricks? well there are no tricks they are actually just good website designing skills, when I launch a website I submit their URL's to all the major search engines, I make sure each website has the Keywords and Description meta tags, make sure keywords for the business are used through out the site and often, when I can I ask the clients to write a blog which gives the site the regularly changing content which Google likes, accessibility is key, I make sure all my sites have Tab Index's, Access Keys and a page which describes how to use accessibility on the site, link up with social networking where you can, add Facebook Like button, Google +1 button and a Tweet button, make sure you have a Facebook page for your business also, make sure images on your site have descriptions, alt text and where you can long descriptions for accessibility.

Do some link exchanges with companies in your field so if you are based in Bournemouth there is no problem doing a link exchange with a electricians in Glasgow, update your content when you can, I am not saying doing every month but do not let years go by before you update.

The most important thing to me is that you as the business owner should have 100% control over your website, it is not only with SEO that people are getting ripped off!

Make sure your domain name is registered in your name and to your address, you can search your domains registration details with this website - whois {dot} sc

Make sure you are not paying over the odds, my clients pay £10 a year for a .com and £10 every 2 years for a .co.uk

If you have to call your website designer to update your content then ask them to build you a CMS (Content Management System) so you can update the content yourself, if they can not do this then find another designer, you can some software called Wordpress as a CSM for a website (it is not only a blogging tool) but it does need some customising to look like your current website and to include all the good SEO stuff that you need, personally I built my own CMS system which concentrated on small business's and SEO but you will find that most web designers will use a pre built CMS as they have learnt their skill from the back of a cereal pack and not actually done the hard bit and gone to collage like the rest of us.

If you have any questions about SEO or website design please post a reply in this thread and I will be more than happy to explain anything.

 

[aaelectric]

HI everybody, I am new here and just wanted to add my few pence on this subject.

I actually came across this website while trying to find some feedback about Local Link Up as one of my clients was ripped of by them recently, I am actually a web designer and unlike most include SEO FREE to all my clients so when I come across companies that charge huge amounts of money for SEO it actually disgusts me.

SEO is key to all website no matter how big or small the company BUT there are some website that you can literally just not help no matter how much good SEO you do and I am talking about site which have 100 or less visits a month, to get these high rankings in the search engines then you have to turn to black hat tactics like paid for back links and automated traffic.

Lets say you have a website with reasonable traffic 600 visits a month + but you find yourself on pages 4,5,6 ...... of Google and I say Google because thats the one everybody it bothered about as this is the one most people use (Unless you can not familiar with a computer then you use Bing as thats InterNet Explorers default) so what can you do to get your website to page 1?

Well if you have searched for SEO then you will find that everybody wants page 1 and most SEO companies guarantee you page 1 for your keywords BUT they are not talking about single keywords here they are talking combinations which include your geographical location, so Electricians Bristol, Electricians Swindon, Electricians Bath would all be keyword combinations they would guarantee for a page 1 listing but to be honest you can do this yourself, what they can not guarantee but say they can is a high listing for electrician.

Single keywords are much harder to get on the first page of Google and your website would need to have lots or organic traffic for this, so hits from people searching, back links, direct traffic this does not include paid for adverts and the time scale can be 2 years + to achieve this for new domains and a little faster for domains over 3 years old.

But why would you want to appear on the first page of Google for a single keyword? well for most small business's you don't you want to be found for your geographical location, lets say I type into Google Electrician and I find your website as the first result, what are the chances of you actually being a Electrician in my area? well next to none but if I typed in Electrician Swindon then I am pretty much guaranteed that the first result would be in my area.

Website like blogs, forums and shops want to be found for single keywords.

So what are the tricks? well there are no tricks they are actually just good website designing skills, when I launch a website I submit their URL's to all the major search engines, I make sure each website has the Keywords and Description meta tags, make sure keywords for the business are used through out the site and often, when I can I ask the clients to write a blog which gives the site the regularly changing content which Google likes, accessibility is key, I make sure all my sites have Tab Index's, Access Keys and a page which describes how to use accessibility on the site, link up with social networking where you can, add Facebook Like button, Google +1 button and a Tweet button, make sure you have a Facebook page for your business also, make sure images on your site have descriptions, alt text and where you can long descriptions for accessibility.

Do some link exchanges with companies in your field so if you are based in Bournemouth there is no problem doing a link exchange with a electricians in Glasgow, update your content when you can, I am not saying doing every month but do not let years go by before you update.

The most important thing to me is that you as the business owner should have 100% control over your website, it is not only with SEO that people are getting ripped off!

Make sure your domain name is registered in your name and to your address, you can search your domains registration details with this website - whois {dot} sc

Make sure you are not paying over the odds, my clients pay £10 a year for a .com and £10 every 2 years for a .co.uk

If you have to call your website designer to update your content then ask them to build you a CMS (Content Management System) so you can update the content yourself, if they can not do this then find another designer, you can some software called Wordpress as a CSM for a website (it is not only a blogging tool) but it does need some customising to look like your current website and to include all the good SEO stuff that you need, personally I built my own CMS system which concentrated on small business's and SEO but you will find that most web designers will use a pre built CMS as they have learnt their skill from the back of a cereal pack and not actually done the hard bit and gone to collage like the rest of us.

If you have any questions about SEO or website design please post a reply in this thread and I will be more than happy to explain anything.

I am looking for someone to help me with my website and seo are you interested pm me your email address

 

[Kevin Smithers]

I am looking for someone to help me with my website and seo are you interested pm me your email address

I have sent you a pm

 

[paulsmith007]

Firstly, I appreciate that the message left was very unprofessional however, you have dismissed a package that has worked brilliantly for me getting me to the top of google for around 100 key phrases. The sales guys are ruthless but in some cases, very passionate about a package that clearly works wonders for me. Some people are to soft to say no hence putting the phone down which equally rude!!!

You missed put on a great package

 

[Echo]

What's your site and the key words Paul? I always get suspicious when a new member without any posts comes to the defence of a blatant scam.

 

[Hiddo]

Firstly, I appreciate that the message left was very unprofessional however, you have dismissed a package that has worked brilliantly for me getting me to the top of google for around 100 key phrases. The sales guys are ruthless but in some cases, very passionate about a package that clearly works wonders for me. Some people are to soft to say no hence putting the phone down which equally rude!!!

You missed put on a great package

Can you put your site address on here so we can see it? I'd be interested to see what these 100 key phrases are too!!

 

[Top Cat]

What's your site and the key words Paul? I always get suspicious when a new member without any posts comes to the defence of a blatant scam.

Paul,s gone quiet, i wonder why?

 

[telectrix]

he's SEO. ..... sat explaining out.

 

[paulsmith007]

My company details are irrelevant as I don't want any calls/messages asking me about the package. I also understand you questioning my credibility - I could easily be someone working for the company trying to defend, believe me im not lol. What you can do is have a look at cakes by sian who is a friend of mine (she doesn't mind calls) or you could type in cakes caerphilly and see where she appears. In my case, I have been with the company 9 months and on the negative side, I have had 4 to 5 calls about improving my site and at one point had to express my complete dissatisfaction of the constant calls to upgrade my site. Simple fact is, I dont need to as im getting plenty of work. To suggest its a scam is an absolute joke based your personal experience.

 

[hercule]

funny guy