Semalt Reviews 323

Spamming Scammers. Stay away, their methods are dodgy as and will wreck your sites reputation.

My name is Rodrigo Sá, I live in Brazil. A few months ago I had the pleasure of knowing one of the best internet services the "semalt". I see my websites grow daily and I have the support of a competent and competent super competent, Elliot.

awful website - they're sending data to my clients sites and I'm having to spend extra time to block the traffic from the Google Analytics reports as it's skewing the numbers. I've found instructions how to do that on the internet.

Ah, Semalt.

Where do I begin with Semalt?

I had an account using their 99p/first month account to see what the crack was on Semalt SEO.

Kept a close watch on their figures, and whilst the figures on Semalt looked very impressive, Google Analytics just flagged the whole lot as 'referrer spam' with a 100% bounce rate - ruining my website's credibility.

I mentioned this to them, and they got some 'SEO expert' to look over the figures, and raised the bar a little - meaning that I got 50% more referral spam coming in on Google Analytics.

Realising that there was no way I was going to get any meaningful sense from Semalt, I cancelled my account on there before I got charged for my second month at full price - whereupon they cancelled my free version.

Tried calling them only yesterday, but their customer service would seem to be just as adept as their SEO qualifications, either being transferred to voice mail or the line going dead after seven or so rings.

Noticing that Semalt are also blocked by ithemes security, I also got a Semalt blocker installed, so that Google can now deal with them.

Bit of a disaster all-round really, but my rankings are crawling back up following their 'non-relevant keywords' stint together with their referral spam bot and huge bounce-rate increase, and in my opinion, Semalt would be far better employed by learning lessons and going with one of these competitors they keep harping on about.

*EDIT*

I've just been in touch with Semalt to enquire what exactly my 'fraudulent activities' were.

The customer service rep just dried up and kept asking who my manager was, no doubt hoping to pass the buck over to someone else.

For info - all I did was to take out a copy of their 'auto SEO' package, then deleted it before the month's trial was up. This is NOT fraudulent, this was an official Semalt offer, which I chose not to proceed with.

I purchased a FULLSEO on BLACK FRIDAY with big discount for 3 months and manager Calvin Robert explane everything about this service. Sent a full plan(step by step what they must change in my e-shop), they corrected all errors and added a lot of good banklinks (so we again in TOP1 possition with our main keywords, i hope we'll be in this possition even 3 months...)Another keywords it is not so much important, so and positions a lower. Manager Calvin Robet communicate very easely, i recommend him!!!

I really want to like the AutoSEO at $99/mo, but no. For the price ... probably not a good value.

The problem is adding my own keywords.

Disappointed with the results for me. Paid upfront for a year which is fair enough. I had never used SEO on my website before and was doing nicely getting on first page of Google for many of my important keywords.

I wanted to take my website to the next level and get more top 1 and 2 listings. However over the year while I could see changes to random keywords which are slightly related to our business, the important ones struggled to see any change and more worryingly decrease in ranking.

Tried to work with Semalt to see if I needed to change anything on the website, but it appeared there was nothing unless I waited for an exciting update the following month (of course after my current subscription ran out).

On discussion it was said "hi Chris
we've crawled the website and double checked it but everything looks ok
honestly, I have no idea why your top keys dropped while all the rest of them are growing very good
it's strange".

So for me I decided not to renew. I'm giving 1 star as I've paid for a service that hasn't provided results in the important/relevant areas of business. I have no idea about the spam bots people refer to in other reviews.

EDIT: In view of Semalt's reply I was in full communication throughout the 12months. All required updates were done to the website (meta tags, descriptions etc) and acknowledged. Yes I was informed of needing to pay more for full SEO, however my needs were fully discussed before signing up and auto SEO was recommended for my needs.

I have to write this review because I am annoyed by their marketing tactics..

I monitor my google analytics and these guys or their affiliates use many domains to send traffic..

This happens almost 10 - 20 times a day and the worst past is that they don't realize that its problematic for some people who care about the bounce rate and abhor spammy traffic..

Semalt is known for unscrupulous behaviour, engaging in large scale referrer spam campaigns and flooding website's logs and analytics reports with referrer spam to advertise their website(s). There is hard evidence of this available in various places online despite Semalt denying this at every opportunity. I find it absolutely abhorrent that Semalt to this day refuse to acknowledge or apologise for these actions which are causing a nuisance for webmasters across the internet. The polarising reviews on Trustpilot makes it pretty clear that the vast majority, if not all of the 5 star reviews are fake as Semalt has proven on various occasions that they still engage in questionable practices (how is it that an SEO company completely ignores ‘robots.txt’ directives?!) As I mentioned, there is PLENTY of evidence of this online, please do your own research before dealing with these people.
Please be aware - a common excuse used to report these unfavourable reviews seems to be that 'you are not a customer'. You do not need to be a customer to fall victim to Semalt's referrer spam.

I have experienced all of this first hand, with Semalt crashing my website multiple times. I should not have to contact a company and politely ask that they stop crashing my website, it just shouldn't happen in the first place. I have managed to block their crawler from my website but wanted to share my findings with anybody considering using this company so they can make an informed decision.

Edit: I'd already contacted you and asked to you stop and you didn't respond so I didn't try again. I find it laughable you accuse me of being a competitor. I don't work in marketing/SEO, but that seems to be your standard response to everybody!

Not only do the spam the analytics of thousands with their referral spam, but they also provide very bad advice. I had a client that used them in the past and they completely messed up his SEO with, you guessed it, more spam and blackhat tricks. It took us 8 months to get him back to where he started.

Eastern European spam artists. They use spam referral bots. Post 5 star reviews on themselves on trustpilot with fake accounts(look at how every happy client has only 1 or 2 trustpilot review). Typically post 5 star reviews right after a true 1 star review(wow isn't this a coincidence).

Deny everything right out of the Russian Public Relations Guidebook written in 1954. Deny everything even when it is 100% proven. All these various seo-services(com/org) domains sending bot spam traffic are owned by SEMALT. SEMALT spams websites that have no connection to SEMALT, no contract with SEMALT, and quite frankly most website owners have no idea who SEMALT is because of their ultra shady practices which require them to keep a low profile and try to put out the fires calling them spammers.

Semalt trustpilot person - if you have the gumption to come on and post a reply on this review then answer the following questions when you do:

1. Does SEMALT admit to owning a large quantity of domain containing seo-services in various forms including .com and .org variations?

2. Does SEMALT use those domains to send bot traffic to websites which have no contract or have had no contact with SEMALT?

3. Does SEMALT admit to posting the fake reviews on Trustpilot which they have been flagged for by Trustpilot?

4. Why doesn't SEMALT simply stop using those domain to send bot spam traffic if that is the cause of all their bad reviews?

5. If SEMALT are SEO experts, why do they even need bot spam traffic generating domains?

A company that uses dodgy tactics to get business such as hijacking analytics.

UPDATE: So Semalt tried to say I was lying and reported my review. Thankfully Trustpilot approved my review. Clearly mine and others here giving negative reviews are telling the truth. Don't do business with this shameful company. You can easily Google this company and see legitimate websites highlighting the same dodgy tactics.

UPDATE 2: In response to Semalt claiming for a second time that I'm a liar. I don't need to be named as a customer to give you a negative review when your bots are ruining my website data and bounce rates, just like everyone else giving you a 1 star. So I'm dealing with your company despite not giving you permission.

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.

Generated links on shady websites. Stay away!

Here's how Semalt works: their crawlers simulate browsers and leave fake referrer headers on publicly available website logs. This means that their process is entirely automated, but very poor quality. Your website will be at risk of penalization if Google finds out you're attempting to artificially boost your SEO. The links are on scammy sites, porn sites, and empty or malicious sites.

The customer service was very poor. I interacted with a rep named Elena, who consistently denied that these issues were happening. She claimed that the links are "encrypted" so that only Google can know where they are. However, I have second party analytics software keeping track, and found a list of 1000+ sites they had built bad links on. They also claimed to have fixed 404s and other errors on my site, but they refused to give me any more information and warned that if I canceled their services, my site rankings would fall. Much the opposite!

I do not recommend this organization.

Awesome Seo Platform.....
Great experience with Semalt Seo services....

great experience with Semalt.
there is one guy is he is handling my aacount . he name is Calvin. he is such a great parson.

thank you Calvin sir...

Thanks to the analytics from Semalt I see the details I should pay attention to on my website. Improving even small things, the result becomes better. Thank you for your services and conscientious attitude to your customers.

Honestly, I saw the advertisement from Semalt about free consultation and wanted to get only feedback about my website and make everything by myself then. But when I saw how many problems and missed details I have on it, I made a decision to leave it to professionals. Thank you, you met my expectations!

My business is connected with kitchenware. I had a good site but my clients asked me too many questions to understand what they should do with their buying. I ordered video production for each of the device I sell and now I have more satisfied clients.