If you're looking for SEO services, knowledgeable account teams, good customer servicethen AVOID AT ALL COSTS! A campaign spend just short of £3k resulted in a paltry 5 links, with naturally no moves on ranking. An account manager who'd spent the best part of her time ignoring or hiding from our campaign, her lack of knowledge of SEO was appalling. After a few months and no further links, she disappeared completely with no further correspondence at all - although it was claimed she was still meant to be managing our campaign. Creare obviously have a different understanding of this term, and the complete lack of any results, weak links or otherwise really did rub salt in the wounds. Our hopes that the management team may have been interested in this shocking performance were quickly dashed. Nothing was offered to make up for the appalling results of the campaign, but an offer was made of 5 links per month going forward. My 13 year old (helping out in the office after work) manages more than that in between her homework! For anyone claiming to have any knowledge of SEO to suggest that 5 weak links would have any great impact on SEO in a competitive field was in itself astounding a simple analysis of the competition would have soon blown that theory. Unfortunately Creare appear to ignore the well respected SEO tools like OpensiteExplorer, WebCEO, Ahrefs, SEMRush or indeed any tools that give competitive insight, instead using a very, very basic in house system. That in itself really should have rung warning bells for us. Reporting was non existent apart from a couple of early emails saying the site had passed Stage 1 or 2 (no explanation what this actually meant), and one early email stating the links. Whether embarrassment set in over the complete lack of results, or whether reporting is simply an alien concept for Creare I've no idea but our own analysis gave a strong indication of why Creare were so silent, the results were appalling. In fact it's almost an achievement in itself to have such a poor performing campaign we just wish it wasn't at our cost. If you're interested in SEO services tread warily and do a little homework beforehand to understand what does and doesn't constitute an SEO campaign. Blogs like SEOMoz or forums like SEOchat will soon give you an idea of what to look for and what not to look for. Creare did try and pull the wool over our eyes with regard to SEO but soon backtracked when they realised we actually have an understanding of the area (we handle our own campaign on another site). They didn't however recognise that good customer service consists of rectifying a problem rather than ignoring it, but instead begrudgingly tried to justify the unjustifiable and offered a campaign with much fewer promises than we'd been offered in the original agreement. I can't speak for any other services they offer but if this is their approach on customer service, and the level of competency of their account managers then that in itself is enough to make me turn heel. Very quickly in fact. I just wish we'd realised that before handing over cash. Buyer beware, be very very beware. read more

I have now been a client of Creare for around 9 months now and it is because of the service and results that I have received so far from them as a business which has led me to writing this review. At the moment I am a small online business but growing and learning all the time - I really do learn something new each day! I feel Creare is the right SEO company for both myself personally and my business. SEO was not originally one of my skills so I am learning all the time, but it is for this very reason that I have been grateful to Creare for their guidance and experience helping make this easier area easier to understand and to apply to my business. I feel Creare understand my business, they have listened to what I need as a small business and what I am trying to achieve through both researching and understanding what I do. I have also found that Creare work with integrity, by ensuring I receive genuine industry related links I feel confident we are working towards achieving a number one website status that will achieve sustainability at No. 1 rather than manipulating results which will only provide a fleeting No. 1 status and thus the cost would quickly outweigh any possible gains, which is not what any forward thinking business seeks! I feel I have been lucky in being allocated a first class Account Executive in Fallon Fitzsimmons who works with me on my SEO campaign which is making great progress. Fallon has also brought a new perspective to my campaign by optimising each page of my website and products so that ultimately I gain more sales which then helps fund my SEO campaigns. Fallon is always in regular contact with me, keeping me up to date with progress and ideas. I always find it easy to contact Fallon for any help or advice I may need, which always results in a speedy answer back, which as any business owner knows this service is worth its weight in gold. It is one less call or issue that you have to chase or contend with that day. Reducing any stress within your working day is great. Again as any business know's most of the time it's down to the individual service you receive within a company rather than the company itself with regards to the quality of customer service you receive. Well done Fallon, much appreciated. Best regards, Paul Parker read more

Signed for the top service they had after lengthy negotiations about process, many different fees, notice period etc etc and they sold me the world. The website was handed to them with a Page Rank of 2 and after nearly a year and spending more than £8K in fees, the Page Rank is now 1 and the traffic has not improved at all instead they have gone lower than before! We hired a marketing specialist in house who found many black hat backlinks which means they used some paid backlinks sites for a £5 of something to add links on their websites and we got penalised by Google because of this they have done absolutely nothing to improve the generic traffic and none of the nearly 100 keywords given to them to work on achieved any ranking at all! I also had to chase them every month for reports and if I do not email them with the monthly keywords, they would not bother asking for them. All keywords provided to them for them to do some research and provide alternatives and variations but they only used the keywords I provided them with without doing any further work even if they were low no advice given and no help at all. They started writing articles for our blog, although the articles seems OK, they have achieved no traffic or interest from anyone! We asked them to get the backlinks removed but now it is 2 months and no replies to emails or calls. But their sale team still call me to sell me other stuff, what an insult! So my honest advice is to avoid them at all cost and I'm happy to share any details with anyone if required. read more

I spent a long while searching for a web design company that would meet my expectations. I'd had a bad experience with a local web design company who's idea of design was nothing more than an overpriced template with a bit of tarting up. I stumbled across Creare while visiting another website, liked what I saw and dropped them an email. Within minutes one of their team had responded to my enquiry and gave me a call. At the end of the conversation I knew I'd found a quality company. I had a visit from Adam who showed me a prototype site Creare had made and it was everything I'd wanted in a website and more. It reflected our branding perfectly! The effort that had gone in to producing the prototype and the quality of the design made me feel confident I was dealing with a winning team. Our designer Mike has been spot on during the entire build of the site, always on hand to answer my questions and very patient with my nitpicking! Each and every time I've asked for a change to be made its has been done within minutes. I'm absolutely delighted with the site and the service Creare provide at every level. Creare have now taken on our SEO and I look forward to an ongoing working relationship with them as our site grows and our business grows. Please don't waste time and money with other web design companies. Creare really are at the top of their game and should be the benchmark that lesser design companies aspire to. Robert Rowlandson Director Rowlys Van Hire Limited read more

There enquiry team are faultless, promising a bespoke web design, telling you how good there products are etc etc. WRONG! Before the order is signed they try to up sell there products from hosting, professionally written content how your design will be bespoke, daily phone calls to give you forecast plans on web traffic. Once the order is signed and they have your deposit, all the above will STOP. I emailed a web design brief that included how i want my webpage to look and function, who my competitors are etc etc. My web designer didn't even look at the brief! I received one short phone call from him and a few days later he presented me with the homepage. It was unprofessional, rushed, not listed to a word i said about how and what my company is. Every image used is taken from istock and all images used was from page one, no time taken there to choose the correct images. The project from there got worse and worse. No phone calls no updates, not listening to my ideas. To top the whole experience off whilst my webpage was being designed the designer left the company and this i was not notified about. Perhaps why my webpage was so BAD. I had enough and wanted out and take my business elsewhere. After trying to cancel my order with creare, they refused and have now made a court claims order against me, this after the above and taking £320 deposit. In all the stress and the financial costs is now well over £1300 the company is a scam. STAY AWAY ! read more

I would like to take a few moments now having just spent time working on descriptions for our site ,even at this late hour by your efforts and encouragement, that "we are getting there" to thank you for all your help and the work you are putting in to get our site returning a profit. It has been a hard slog for me being quite computer Illiterate to have had to be more involved since our IT man left. Kevin our man who stepped into the breach has also worked hard with Ashley, Pete et al. I initially worked and enjoyed learning with Jennie. Now with our current account manager Fallon's direction, and Ektas help, I feel we are moving in the right direction. Some how it does seem to be beginning to work, the site itself your team designed and built was an instant hit,but then was even more refined to better appeal to our prospective customers. Your explanations of the workings of SEO and reports are having the effect of channelling our efforts in the right direction and I look forward to your reports on Conversions. To see the increase in both traffic and sales is most encouraging and given the economic climate I chose to start this totally new and to me foreign business venture in is quite amazing. I look forward to the next Year with vigour but am sure with Creare's help we will be most successful and reap the rewards of all this hard work Thank You Trevor read more

Creare promised the World and fell considerably short. They built a pretty website, but that was as far as it went. They made the following promises that they could not fulfil: 1) They would enter the products for us. They did not and this has taken me over 200 hours to enter 70% of them (nearly two years when slotted in between day-to-day work). By the time I had entered enough products to set the website live, they told me the website was out of date and needed to be completely re-designed (approx. cost £5k). 2) The website could be used to directly create purchase orders when stock levels fall below a specific level. This is not possible. 3) Stock could be updated en-mass after a delivery. This is not possible and has to be done individually, which is very time consuming. 4) Customers would be able to search for products based on manually entered criteria. This is not possible. 5) The site would be set up for Google Analytics. They have not as yet been able to get this working, meaning I am unable to monitor the website traffic. On top off all these compromises, we had to pay for all alterations made to the draft website, before it was signed off as complete. Unfortunately we had entered into a contract with Creare before they revealed that they could not deliver on their promises, by which point it was too late for us to back out. read more

We were approached by Creare early in 2009. We already had a web site but it had been created "in-house" and with little experience/knowledge we found it difficult to promote it over the INTERNET. Having listened to Creare and what they could do, we decided to go ahead and put our site over to Creare to produce. Initially we rented the site for 3 months as they said that it would take that long to prove their worth. If we felt it had not been demonstrated to work, then we could part company with no fixed contract agreements. As it was we subsequently purchased the site. We have been very pleased with what Creare has achieved for us. We get a steady stream of clients every month to the "Estimating" page, many coming via Google. We also ask all our clients who phone to arrange an appointment for a quote, how they came across our name and again Google is certainly one of the main answers, so Creare's efforts are indeed proving to be working quite well. In fact we have also had several comments to say how professional the site looks. We will probably start to expand the site with other pages during 2010. Creare also have experience in Yellow Pages advertising so they also helped with setting up our book adverts as well as advising us on how reducing the size of the advert would still get similar results for less cost. read more

As self-diagnosed technophobes, we really had no idea where to begin with getting an online presence but we knew we needed to up our game and start a website to promote our business. We enlisted the help of Creare to design our website, based on the portfolio of work they have on their own site. We were kept very well informed during the whole process, receiving updates from our designer on progress and to let us provide our input on the site. We were incredibly happy with the final product it looks incredibly professional, and the content is a perfect representation of our business. We also started paying for Search Engine Optimisation which, together with our new site, we feel has really improved our number of enquiries and we're rushed off our feet! Now that the site is up and running, our consultant keeps in regular contact with us to let us know what work they've done to improve our site, where we're showing in Google for our chosen keywords, and detailed reports on how the site is doing. All in all, the last few months has proven to be well worth the investment with Creare we have a website which we always receive compliments on, and have received plenty of enquiries to give our business a much-needed boost and cover the costs of our SEO service read more

I have really noticed a higher volume of calls over the last few days and it does compound the fact that Creare are doing a fabulous job,so please accept my appreciation for the hard work and it's a real assurance that they are delivering what they said they would,I'm very happy and impressed so please keep up the good work. I have received a first class service from Creare's Link Building Team,I must say initially I was not sure if I made the choice but I can honestly say that the team consisting of Holly Bale,Brad Longman,Daniella Woodward and Damon Taylor who have all done a truly wonderful job in building links for my website and this has secured my position with Creare and I can confirm I have noticed a dramatic increase in business since the team started working on my website,I would recommend this highly efficient and effective team to anyone who wishes to grow their business rapidly,as a result of the service I have received I intend to increase my business with Creare as I feel it has been tried and tested and I am really satisfied with the results,keep up the good work team as you are extremely good at what you do,thank you so much I really appreciate your your hard efforts. read more

A quick review for Creare about how pleased we are with the SEO service they've provided us with over the last 12 months. Having paid for a website to be designed with another company, but considering Google listings, Creare were able to take our site and optimise it perfectly for our business. We were a little hesitant when our consultant recommended changing some of the text on the website to improve our rankings, but changes were professional, in keeping with our business and able to maintain the tone of the content we had written ourselves. Our regular updates from our consultant are very welcome, letting us know which of our keywords are ranking well and which areas need improvement and what they're going to do to change this. This proactive attitude has meant we've had no reason to complain, and have had our concerns dealt with in a timely and professional manner. Having had no experience of SEO prior to this, we were slightly wary about how much of a difference it would make but now we receive so many emails and phone calls through our website that we only wish we'd done it sooner! read more

Creare have designed and built our fitness boot camp company a brand new, absolutely fantastic, website. The whole experience has been very exciting and a pleasure. Our team consisted of Gemma, Adam and Claire. I have to say that I am particularly glad that Gemma was the one who picked up the phone when I rang to make my initial enquiries. She has been on top of the project the whole way, always thinking about the next step, and coming up with new ideas to make our website even better. After having a bad experience with our last web design company we were nervous about starting the process again, but there was no need. Gemma, Adam and Claire took care of everything right down to the last detail. It has been a stress- free, hassle- free and exciting experience working on this project together. We have also passed our SEO over to Creare and I have every confidence in their professionalism and ability to help us rise in google rankings. We just wish we had gone with Creare from the very start. read more

We were very cautious on taking on another SEO company due to past experiences however we found the initial contact both friendly and informative. We spoke to a very friendly and enthusiastic account manager in Fallon who was very honest in Creare's approach and timescales and if something wasn't working then she would always offer ideas. We are kept in the loop with everything that is going on and get detailed reports as well as a fortnightly phone call from herself of which we bounce ideas of each other and generally come up with something we can use going forward. Although it is early days I am very happy with the working relationship and it is good to have an account manager who is as passionate as we are on driving our website and Internet business forward. Kind regards Lee Naylor Ecommerce Manager Francis & Gaye Jewellers www.francisandgaye.co.uk read more

Be very careful with this company, they will tie you in for a long contract and offer little if nothing for a very large investment. We are a startup company with a small budget so I initially signed up for what I thought was a trial run. I paid a significant amount of money thinking that this was for 3 months work after the first month they sent me another large bill and told me to refer to the smallprint in the contract. In fact they had tied me in for 3 months I was not happy as the work they have done would have taken me 30 minutes and they have charged me over £2000 for the privilege! Think long and hard before using them they are VERY underhand in my opinion. I understand a contract with 1 month notice but to tie you in for 3 months is outrageous. Surely they should believe in their product and you will be so amazed that you would not want to leave. read more

'Best Marketing Decision We've Made' We have been thinking about how to market are business for ages and had heard about SEO but weren't to sure what it was or how it worked. When we searched SEO in the Google the first company we saw was Creare so we gave them a call. Our sales person Gemma was very thorough and discussed SEO and how it could work for are company really well, which we made us take the plunge and sign up. Working with are SEO conultant Sam has been an absolute dream and he has talked us through everything as well as sending reports that are really detailed on how thinks are going. We've started to get loads more business through from the website now and are really happy we made the decision to go with Creare it's the best marketing decision we've ever made! read more

I just wanted to take a minute to thank Creare for all their hard work on our exceptional new website! We're new to Creare and the SEO game but if the hard work the web team have put in over the past few months is anything to go by we're confident we're going to be happy here for a while! Our sales manager and web designer have been amazing. Having someone take the time to explain the steps and the processes involved with getting a new site off the ground has kept us at ease. After all, a great website is an investment, and the end result is better than we could have hoped for. The team have never missed a deadline or left a phone call unanswered and we've never been made to feel anything other than top priority so thanks Creare and keep up the good work! read more

When it comes to my business, I want to know that my website and marketing strategy is in the best of hands. We had heard exceptional things about Creare and they didn't disappoint. After agreeing to work on the SEO of our website, we had such great rankings results that we decided to have Creare develop our new website. Throughout every process, from our initial sales to conversations with our SEO consultant, right through to our designated web designer, we received only the best service. We were regularly informed of updates and developments and eagerly anticipated conversations regarding our website's performance. This has allowed my business to grow and I would recommend Creare to any business. read more

Making the decision to have Creare carry out the Company's Marketing and produce it's Website has to be one of the best decisions I have made since becoming M.D of Hadley & Ottaway some 9 years ago. Since teaming up with them almost 12 months ago enquiries from potential customers has increased significantly, so much so that the Company is enjoying an unusually busy winter period during what is traditionally a quiet time of year for Removal Companies. Those staff at Creare allocated to looking after our account have become a vital part of the H&O team and with their continued support and vast knowledge of Marketing techniques our Company has a very prosperous future! read more

Creare has helped my business in more ways than one, not only enhancing my online presence but also helping me in achieving my businesses long term and short term goals. Throughout my campaign, I have not only seen Creare deliver in getting my keywords to appear of page one of Google listings, but my understanding of how the industry works has helped me assess my business and its standing. I have been so impressed with the return on investment that I upsold my current campaign and can't wait to see the results. I am even looking into the possibility of having a new website designed by the Creare web designers and have full confidence in its proposal. read more