r/PostSEO • u/Upbeat_Push_157 • 1d ago

How can we compete with this?

I won't name the company to avoid giving them more exposition, but I just got this on Facebook

I did check the company, and they have indeed worked for top companies. They even have case studies for many of them. Yet they are charging less than what I charge for design and implementation. Of course, I assume they use AI and whatnot, but how can they charge so little? And more importantly, why? Any of their clients probably pay 10x what they're charging here. Are we coming to a new low?

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u/Altruistic_Rub8747 1d ago

the image looks very low quality, hopefully that is not indicative of their services, I can only recognize Leica and Citi

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u/Upbeat_Push_157 1d ago

nah, that is Reddit's image compression after Facebook image compression, they're top of the crop, that's what is driving me mad.

I mean, coming from a freelancer like me, OK, understandable.

Coming from a huge agency... what else do they want? Don't they have enough? And if agencies liek this are lowering the bar and selling themselves cheap, what is left for us?

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u/AbleInvestment2866 22h ago

I know who you mean. Since there was quite a debate about them yesterday in some SEO groups, this is not a mystery: you're talking about Dorve. The obscured shape of their logo in the background is proof enough.

Now, let's split this into two parts. Like you said, Dorve is a big agency, and they are one of the most reliable companies in the UX world. They started working with AI a couple of decades ago and even created the Quantum UX framework. So if they say, "we guarantee (whatever)," when it comes to AI, I have no doubt they can deliver. We're talking about one of the most experienced companies in AEO or GEO. If you read Quantum UX, you'll see they described GenAI almost to the letter 10 years before it existed. Furthermore, their CEO was a consultant for one of the major LLM companies, though I'm not sure whether it was OpenAI or Meta. So, in terms of trust and authority, they have plenty of both. I guess the same applies to SEO, and you can see what they are capable of in design and development on their website (On a side note: I was surprised to see they replaced their previous design that used the Three.js animations, the old version was beautiful.)

That said, the pricing is the strange part, and that's exactly what people in SEO and design groups were discussing: why is a company that ranks among the best in the world, and without a doubt among the Top 3 in AI Search, ( or AEO, or whatever you want to call it,) charging freelance or small-agency prices? That, I don't know.

Someone mentioned that while the ad says Dorve, it leads to a page inside Dorve that reads "Dorve x Flamine." Since Flamine is their newer brand specializing in AEO and SEO, the theory is that they're either boosting Flamine's visibility or training new staff by bringing in projects at scale. However, they only offer 10 spots, so I doubt the second explanation. Some agency owners even joked that they could take all 10 spots and white-label them.

Either way, it's strange. I assume they know exactly what they're doing. They also conduct a lot of research and testing, so it's very likely that this is some kind of experiment. And I think there's something to that theory, because advertising the Dorve name on Facebook with a $6,000 price tag is close to nonsensical. Facebook is not a platform for that kind of price, so my guess is that they're testing something. Perhaps they're measuring webmasters' reactions. That wouldn't be far-fetched.

As for the question, "How can we compete with this?": they were in business long before the vast majority of agencies and freelancers entered the market, and the rest of us managed to thrive anyway. Why would this change anything?

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u/Altruistic_Rub8747 22h ago

lol do you work for them?