I can understand this. I run an internet marketing company and do know there is a lot of garbage sites our there. As we speak, Google is rooting them out and making the search engines a nicer and cleaner place to look. The "quick" but frowned upon methods of SEO are also being rooting our, a lot of them no longer working at all. The industry keeps on moving towards good, honest SEO with approved and smiled upon technique. With that being said, I also relate SEO to being in the phonebooks back in the old days. If you weren't in there, you didn't exist. Now, if you aren't ranking in the search engines, you don't exist. Also, you need to find someone who specializes in marketing to your industry- not just some techno people. A lot of internet marketers, unfortunately, are not the best most honest business people you will find. Don't hire them if you don't get the warm and fuzzy. They probably won't deliver to your needs. You still need real marketing people who specialize in water or mold remediation, or how else are they really going to know how to generate a looker conversion into a phone call? Testament to this is that my company took a water damage restoration client of ours from nothing to 10k in a month and 20k the following month from their online sales. Not bad considering they had zero before. SEO still works, but you need the people who do it right and well and also specialize in your industry. Takes a bit more looking to find that company, but when you do it is worth it. 

 

If you used to pay for a Yellowpages add why not try a year of putting that money into a site and SEO from a professional?