Is this SEO stuff all a scam?

Everyday I take phone calls from SEO companies that want to offer our company an “internet marketing campaign” to tell you the truth I am sick to death of them ringing up and I hope I was rude enough to put most of them off.

However one of our companies was in need of some website promotion so I took up the offer of a free trial with one of the companies and so far, it has been a complete waste of time.

We are now 6 weeks into using this company (that shall remain unnamed). The first 3 weeks were fine and the work they completed had a positive impact on our Google page positions, with our website sitting comfortably at position 6. After a month we signed a new contract as they had impressed us with their work, 3 weeks later and I really wish we hadn’t bothered. About a week after we signed our contract I noticed a huge drop in page positions, when I called up and spoke with the account manager they believed that this was “perfectly normal”. “your site is being re indexed at the moment, give it time and you will see yourself appear back on page 1 again, this happens all the time.

Have we appeared on page 1 again, have we B******s.

Week 6 and nothing, I took a look at the fine print and realised that according to them “ as Google is liable to change their algorithm without notice we cannot be held responsible for any sudden change in position”.

As a person that is naive in SEO please can someone tell me, is this normal procedure for an SEO company to behave in such a way? And if so does this mean that it is all a Conn? I have employed the services of a private SEO consultant so I can get a second opinion on the situation as we may be taking it further, but even then you don’t know weather you can trust them or not but so far he sounds like he knows what he is talking about.

But the experience has left me wondering whether there is anyone out there who can be trusted, when you search on the internet for SEO services you are bombarded with results from people that all say they “think outside the box” and “do things differently” but are they all playing the same game and grabbing our cash while they post up the odd link here and there? I have a gut feeling that there are very few genuine companies that can offer website promotion but a lot that tie you down into long term contracts.

Maybe the way ahead is to learn how to optimise my own website and not bother with any of them........

Resources.

SEO Consultant London based guy who is helping me with my website audit. At least he hasnt tried to flog me a long term contract.

You Tube video about SEO optimisation.Quite interesting.