This review will be a summary of my experience working with 1SEO. You can decide for yourself whether you would want to work with them or not.
Started working with 1SEO in fall of 2023 after being with smaller company. Bought into the social media hype surrounding them and their marketing videos. Based on their social media presence, I thought they were genuine and were going to help me grow.
First thing that was done was build new website, for $8-10,000, so it would be optimized for SEO work.
Took months for the website to be done and have had multiple other companies show and explain to me how my website has cheap back links to foreign websites and other websites that would never help me with SEO.
10s of thousands of dollars wasted on Google PPC ads and Yelp ads with no signs of management being done on them.
I was told that Yelp would be a good avenue for calls and that they had a person from Yelp working in their office.
Before I left they were trying to push me into Reddit ads because they had a new person from Reddit in their office too.
I managed most of my Google Business Profile page but they were doing a monthly update post on it.
In June of last year, my calls from Google dropped to nothing. Months went by and the answers from 1SEO was that everything was fine and no idea why I'm not getting calls.
I finally realized that my Google map pin was showing my business location hundreds of miles. My profile, my ads, everything showing in New York.
I was told that this was not their fault but Google and Ai caused this. I was told that my ads couldn't be showing in New York because they are set up by zip code.
As soon as the map pin location was fixed, calls from my Google business profile, and other ads all came back.
After months of reduced revenue because of this, I asked 1SEO if they would credit me my monthly fee for the months that things were wrong and that fell on deaf ears.
I asked them repeatedly to help me recover the ad money that was wasted since they are a "Google Premier Partner"
After about a month, I got a response that they wouldn't be able to help get any of my money back. I don't even know if they reached out to anyone at Google on my behalf because I was never copied on any emails if they were sent.
Finally after getting no where with my account manager and a Director at 1SEO, I emailed the COO and CEO explaining all the issues I had with 1SEO, all the money lost, etc.
They said they would give me a video package valued at $10,000 to make up for it. And assigned me a new account manager.
Spent multiple days shooting footage with their video crew only to never get any videos from them. I tried contacting the head of the video crew and never received a response.
So in summary, I was spending $4,000 per month to get 1 GMB update and 1 batch of SEO content and ads management. I never knew what if any changes were ever made to ads. Towards the end of my time with them, my original account manager basically said that the things being done were probably not making a difference SEO wise.
I am a small business that didn't have money to waste. I have never felt more used and disrespected by a company that I gave close to $100,000 in fees.
1SEO is now owned by a private equity company and maybe things were different or I would have been treated differently when I had issues when it was privately owned.
I really had high hopes when I started working with them and I am very disappointed in the outcome. read more