I met and sat with an account manager from an online digital marketing company about 3 years ago, discussing how we could drive our business forward through SEO and PPC marketing.

After a back and forth discussion of our marketing needs and the services the company could provide, we were presented with a package that looked very similar to the one below:

• 10 Keywords
• 20 Backlinks A Month
• 10 Press Releases
• 30 Retweets
• 50 Facebook Shares
• On Page Optimisation
• 1 x 500 Word Article
• Above Article Submitted To 20 Article Directories
• 20 Directory Listings

£xx.xx

The account manager’s presentation (at the time) was very convincing: he thoroughly explained the benefits of the package, namely higher web rankings in Google and an increase in website traffic and customers.…