Poor performance and unprofessional service
We engaged Digital Eagle for PPC and SEO in the middle of Oct. 2020. They did well with PPC. But SEO was a pain.
We are working on a KPI of doubling organic revenue in 8 months. The organic revenue keeps dropping 3 months in a row. Since we started, we had bi-weekly meetings to update the status, every single meeting, they keep telling me that they are doing a fantastic job, everything is moving toward success and everything was taken care of. Our sales were OK, thanks to the other sales channel, so I didn’t look into SEO or organic revenue closely. Until January 2021 I had time to look into the report in Google Analytics when I was shocked by the report - dropping 3 months in a row.
I asked why the performance has been dropping. Firstly they denied it, saying that the organic revenue has been increasing compared to the same time last year. It was outrageous hearing that because on our contract/agreement is clear that the increase was to compare to past 6 months. When I threw the data I pull out from Google Analytics in front of their faces, they had to admit the drop but blamed the paid brand Google campaigns for taking over the credit from organic revenue. They ran my paid google campaigns as well, by the way.
I requested a list of tasks they have done for SEO. They cannot provide it but keep saying they have done lots of things, just cannot share it with me because it’s their intellectual property.
I requested to go through the list of Scope of Work from our agreement, they refused, saying they have done lots of things OUTSIDE the scope of work. Again they cannot tell me what they have done because they are their intellectual property. So basically if you are working with them, the scope of work is RUBBISH because they have been doing things outside the scope of work.
Meanwhile, I noticed a bunch of dodge backlinks for my website, the kind of links that you need to pay to get listed, with some dodge websites - if you know what is the grey hat and black hat, you probably know what I am talking about. I confronted them, they didn’t admit or deny it.
We met twice in person to discuss how to address the issue of poor SEO performance, and their proposed resolution is TO INCREASE AGENCY FEE BY 60% for delivering the result they promised when I signed the contract.
I am now approaching ACCC and Consumer Affairs Australia to resolve this issue as it’s clearly a breach of contract.
Be very careful guys, they play grey/black hat SEO, and they breach contract as the contract doesn’t exist.