Red Cow Media - www.redcowmedia.co.uk

Red Cow Media have been fantastic and the speed in which they have increased the traffic to our site is great. We were a little sceptical as to how effective SEO still was because of some bad experiences in the past but in the space of 3 months we've moved from the 4th page of Google to the top 5 results (moving between 2nd and 5th throughout the course of the month). The thing that has impressed me the most though is the quality of the leads. We had been doing social media advertising until recently and whilst we got good volume through, many of the leads weren't good. The quality of the SEO leads is a different level, we're closing around 40% of them at the moment and have had to increase the size of our team because of it.

When we first contacted Red Cow we were sent a proposal with projections on it for different outcomes of the campaign, we based our decision on the average results rather the good projections but in actual fact we've found the results to be even better than the 'good' projection.

Finally, i'd just like to give a shout out to the content writers, we are in a heavily regulated industry where content needs to be pre-approved but the level of writing is second to none and rarely needs any amendments. We can definitely see the difference in quality with Red Cow Media compared to agencies we've used in the past.

We began working with Red Cow Media in June 2020 and have been impressed right from the get go. We have a full digital campaign with them that includes SEO, paid social media advertising on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, and paid Google ads. When we first came to Red Cow Media we had been burned by a previous agency and were a little bit cautious about engaging with another one, but the Red Cow Media team are very different. They're very open about what they're doing and when, and no question was too much trouble for them. They explain things in detail and this made us really confident that they knew what they were doing as well as having considered what was best for our brand. They helped us to expand out from what we were already doing and add new channels that suited our target audience, like Snapchat, which we weren't previously doing but is now performing really well for us. Ultimately, they have also got us excellent results that we're really pleased with and that have helped our business to grow and scale. We now have a defined plan for the next year, which Red Cow will be a big part of.

This is a truthful and honest account of our experience and the reason why we can’t recommend Red Cow’s service to any prospective clients. This is our opinion and you are free to make up your own minds up.

We engaged with Red Cow June of 2019 media to help us improve the visibility of a domain that had little attention up to this point.

They began with the usual audit and some on page changes for the first couple of months which we were pleased with. It was basic stuff but it was what the website needed.

We started seeing some traction and had no reason to doubt their quality.

However, things went sour quickly starting in September when they began to build links towards the website. Instantly, it became obvious that they were simply paying for guest posts with aggressive exact match anchor texts.

For anyone who is even remotely clued in with SEO knows that these violate several of Google’s own link scheme policies which meant that as of today we have had to disavow pretty much every link they’ve built for us. A total waste of time and money on both sides and shocking to be honest.

Immediately, we stopped being happy clients and became unhappy clients and we raised this issue straight away. We continued to get invoices but stopped getting work updates.

At this point, the person we dealt with stepped in to defend Red Cow’s actions and to quote him “You can second guess work and links all day long, at the end of the day it's all subjective and opinion as to what is and isn't a good link.”.

We felt that it was a bad link and they felt it was a good link. I have a document which can be made available to anyone with details of our complaints.

So to be clear for any clients potentially wanting Red Cow to help with links – you may get poor links built towards your website that violate Google’s guidelines but Red Cow’s opinion matters more.

If you disagree, tough. Pay the invoices.

Like he has said, it is all subjective and a matter of opinion so if you feel the example link is good then you’re in luck, if not then do not use. Feel free to contact us for more example or simply plug the domain in and make your own mind up.

What happened after this was perhaps the most abhorrent and cowardly act I have ever seen from a service provider of any type in all my years in the industry.

The person we dealt with decided that he did not want to speak with a paying client anymore, we were unhappy and he did not want to apologise or accept what we were saying.

A quote from him: 'I will not go into this any further, I will not be attending a meeting or spending any more time on it, Please settle the outstanding invoices, or we will be forced to proceed with legal action.”

In our opinion, we had Red Cow bang to rights and they were forced to defend themselves to the point where they realised they couldn’t. It was impossible to defend the links they were building so long as the Google’s link guidelines existed.

It was at this point where we were ‘happy’ to part ways. It seems good practice for a client and provider to be able to part ways amicably should a disagreement like this come up. Not for them.

They wanted us to be unhappy and paying.

At this point they had built two links in October (equally as bad as the previous) and we still have had no evidence of any other work being done.

They had the cheek to invoice us for October, which we did not pay as we had no evidence of the complete work being done or the month end report.

They proceeded by sending our account to a collections team and STILL failed to provide evidence of what they actually did for the money.

Because of the lack of evidence of work we have had to assume they didn’t do the work because if they aren’t able to build poor links then what else could they possibly do? Nothing.

Upon receiving the email from the collections company I asked the person we had dealt with:

“What work was done for this invoice? What is the time frame for the work and where can I see a report that this invoice would have covered?

If you remember, I sent the last email to no response and you point blank refused to discuss the matter but now you want us to pay for the service?

Please help me understand the situation “

I have yet to receive a reply which I am not surprised – the work was poor quality and they simply did not do the contracted hours.

This has been an immensely regrettable experience, Red Cow have been the clear winners with limited efforts, all invoices (and then some) paid and they didn’t even need to all the work thanks to some clever wording in the contract.

Their actions, we feel, leave a stain on the SEO industry and we hope that we can help potential clients ask some hard questions at the pitch process about how they plan on building links and how do they deal with disputes.

We feel like both sides can learn a great deal from this experience.

I first engaged Red Cow Media in February of this year after they came recommended to be by a friend who had used their social media services. I am always a bit hesitant to reach out to these types of companies because I've previously found that they try to talk to you in technical speak which I don't really understand (I'm a typical accountant - technophobic!), but after speaking with the advisor I was immediately put at ease. They are able to explain the process in English, as well as keeping me up to date with excellent customer service. They do send regular reports which I don't fully understand, but they are always there offering to explain it all to me. I am now starting to see results and am very happy with the service I'm getting. The only reason I have given 4 stars instead of 5 is because I have very recently bought a social media package too, and I am waiting for it to start before I comment on that too.

Was really pleased with the overall service from Red Cow, they were very clear in what they were going to do and how they were going to do it and it made the whole process a lot easier to follow.

The built our site and have given us great results in the search engines.

They are easy to work with and always helpful.