So having worked for a long time in internet marketing, I can tell you something: Anyone who tries to sell you SEO is a thief and you should not fall for their lies.
They will open up telling you about all their great tricks and proven theories, it’ll seem like a great option and you’ll think “Whatever, can’t hurt right?”
But then, after they’ve implemented lousy backlinks and forum posts and mini sites, you’ll find things getting worse. “Oops,” they’ll tell you “Apparently google is dinging us, you’ll have to rewrite them or readjust your strategy to make up for this and go in a different direction.”
This will repeat ad infinitum. They will always be giving you that one more thing you need to do for SEO and then when that doesn’t work the next one more thing. You’ll spend half of your SEO work just undoing the damage they’ve done.
Worst of all, they’ll make YOU do everything. You’ll be writing the new content, you’ll be submitting to the decent directories, you’ll be adding the keywords that they spent a few minutes finding on AdWords. You’ll pay them so that YOU can do the work.
Why does this happen? Because Google is smarter and better than them. I mean, if you just think about it the idea that some sleazy peddler is outwitting the king of search engine technology its ridiculous.
Of course, there will be their move back to “legitimate” tactics, and this will be the final website. They’ll look at you, and then the “legitimate” SEO will say “Content is King, produce quality content and that’ll really help your SEO”
Really? Thanks for the revelation! So your great advice for optimizing my search engine is to do a generally good job producing information? You mean what I was doing before I got on your SEO treadmill? You mean basic common sense?
If I hired a marketing firm to advertise my product and their advice was to make my product better you better believe I’d fire them, so why do so many people accept the same attitude from SEOs?
SEOs are working on their buzzword appeal and the hope that companies will be amazed by the lure of page 1 rankings and think that they have some special knowledge, but if you strip away the glitz they have nothing.
Learn from my mistakes, leave SEO alone and just focus on good content with copy protection and stay away from the treadmill.
GreenIrene: Sorry that you had very bad experience with SEO services provider. Actually, the SEO is greatly influenced by Google. It was reported that after Panda update Google has penalized several e-com sites, and your site may have been affected. However, having good product and good content alone may not bring relevant SE traffic if the site is related to e-com. It may be a good idea to link any payments to SEO company to results (such as number of leads, or sales).
Completely agree.I don’t think that only updating contents can always increase your SERP.Also SEO is an ongoing process.If you choose any kind of advertisement method,it also has some time period .Just think that there are thousands of different websites that are relevant to the search query, but really, if your website doesn’t appear in the first 10 pages (or first 100 results), it’s invisible to the world.Due to such kind of bad experience with one SEO,you should not conclude that all SEO has poor impact.
This is the kind of stuff I’d always hear from them, they’d pedantically explain to me how search engines worked like I’d been living under a rock and didn’t understand why they are important.
It’s obviously helpful to rank highly in Google, that’s not up for debate, what is an issue is whether or not SEOs will really do anything helpful for your site that you wouldn’t already be doing on your own, and the answer is a very clear no.
If one asks whether any SEO is required, the answer is “Yes”. One can do SEO by self or pay for it. Doing by self is always preferred if sufficient time and resources are available. If the site is related to e-Com, the SEO may not yield much results (sales/leads) with major search engines, because they (search engine providers) expect smaller e-Com sites to advertise using PPC. By SEO, traffic levels may increase, but not sales/leads.
In one way, what anand said is correct. Yes, I too agree that by doing SEO it increases traffic and not the sales. I too have personal experience in it that by doing seo by hiring a company for that, i did just worked well and increased traffic double. The much we spend that much traffic that i get. But, at one stage i got vexed of not having enough sales and earned only with the ads that i had in my site. SEO is a tool that helps to reach the people quickly than simply posting content without optimizing it. Our site gets succeed only when i reaches the internet users and they get benefit out of it. So, there is nothing wrong doing SEO and spending SEO from my point of view.
First of all, I’ll address the comments towards this story.
That’s like saying rain is greatly influenced by clouds…
Google only dropped the link value of sites that were found to be using tactics that weren’t within the best interests of search quality. Legitimate link building is still as valid as ever, and if anything I’m glad that so many SEO analysts got hit because it was long overdue.
I miss the days when Search Engine Optimisation was just about optimisation of your own web pages.
The simple fact for all websites remains. If you’ve got a good site with content that people actually want then you’ll build up your links organically with little work needed. In my mind, if you want to be top of the results for a keyword then your site needs to be the best site for the subject searched for.
While what you’re saying is true, SEO has turned itself through its dodgy practices into a results game. By touting all of these link-building, article writing methods of getting to the top of Google it’s created this “black magic” feel, in that people claim to be able to do this magic and will purely get judged on whether they can replicate it. Additionally, as the Panda update has just shown, if you’re going to pay good money for SEO then you want to stay at number one. If I paid to get to the top of Google, only for my site to plummet and my SEO company to say that it was down to Google I would probably demand my money back.
This is a story I hear from others all too often lately.
One issue I have found with SEO work lately is that a lot of people tend to be setting themselves up in a consultancy basis. This way, they spout off a list of facts they’ve found from the Internet and state that their experience of getting their friends golf website to be #1 for “golf website” for long enough to take a screenshot gives them enough authority to do this.
This is a common thing in consultancy, and more often than not it’s never a good idea to do this regardless of what type of industry they are in. Many online marketing firms and digital agencies reflect this and how prefer to get their own hands dirty so that things are done right and to the spec.
Because sometimes that is just fact.
I get asked a bunch of SEO questions from people outside of work, and my general response to questions like “how would I rank better for x” is “why should you be top of x?”
Sure, it’s not easy and it might cost a lot of money to make a website with all the bells and whistles to destroy your competition, but sadly not everyone can be number one on a competitive search term. The reason why a lot of large sites have made gains since the last update is because they’ve got the power, the resources and most of all, the content to ensure that they have the better sites.
In hindsight, I would always recommend that before you hire anyone for SEO work that you ask them exactly what they’ll be doing to your site. If any of it sounds incorrect then they should be chucked.
I have addressed this in previous posts, in regards to companies that tout good SEO results on large companies. One guy who sent a proposal (unsolicited) to our office stated that he had previously had Coca Cola as a client, and work on one of their campaigns had increased sales of a new variety of cola. The first reaction I had was “Really?! It must be so hard to rank well for Coke when you’re working for Coca Cola…”
I would agree entirely with your advice, although there are people out there with no interest in getting involved in these aspects of their own website, and I cannot blame them for that. Not everyone is a techie, nor do they have much experience with any SEO or front-end site work.
Ultimately, hiring anyone on a consultancy basis is a gamble and in my opinion you’re perfectly within your rights to ask exactly what the company in question will be doing to improve your site, as well as a detailed explanation as to why it will differentiate you from your competitors. It’s the same as anything else in business, and if your SEO guy can’t take a good grilling in a meeting room from you then they’ve got no business working for your site, or anyone elses.
Should we be more careful when appointing an SEO company/service? How about visiting the site and looking for their testimonials. Call a few contacts and check out. Interview several candidates and request the proposals. Set the realistic goals in seo.
I agree, but then again here is my issue: If SEO rewards good sites, than you don’t really want an SEO Firm, you want a web design firm. It’s like this: I want people to visit my bakery so I hire a carpenter to improve my storefront. He shows up and says “If your cupcakes are better more people will come”
Is it true? Yes. But that’s not why you hire a carpenter, and its not a revelation worth paying a consultant for.
“Have a great website with a lot of great content” is just too obvious and general to justify hiring someone to tell it to you, and its something that any decent site would be doing on its own anyway.
Now, it’d be a different story if they could, say, make the site and write the content, but they don’t. What we’ve essentially ended up with is consultants who can’t give specific advice in their field.
Real SEO isn’t about blog commenting and article submission.
SEO is about having a website that lets search engines do their job, and an ongoing awareness of where your website stands in search.
Anything beyond that is marketing, IMO.
I’d say 95% of the “SEO professionals” out there are not professionals at all, they’re just hacks that read some eBook, and they can’t build their own profitable businesses so they charge someone else to do a bunch of hokey link building exercises.
In many ways I agree with you. The issue is that web design firms can be expensive and when business owners find out that they “need SEO” then they’ll naturally go to a SEO firm. In previous posts I’ve stated that I see a trend towards moving away from SEO and more towards marketing; as most marketing work is now in the digital markets I see agencies hiring more content writers and more people involved in straight marketing to help out websites that want to build their brand and reputation.
Either way, if dealing with a SEO firm I would always say that you should get a free proposal, listing everything they plan to do and why they believe this should work. Consultancy is always a tricky business to get into, and I’ve known my fair share of consultants who didn’t know the first thing about what they were consulting. As SEO is such a tricky thing to truly understand I can imagine hiring a SEO consultant to be a horrible ordeal.
Absolutely. The sad truth is that a lot of people tend to be swayed by the magics of SEO and believe that, if they give someone a big bag of money that they’ll be able to get their site high on Google through little work and small tricks to get themselves noticed.
However, sometimes it’s not all about content. I’m currently working on an optimisation project for a site with tens of thousands of content pages. They rank well for a number of competitive terms, but there is an over-reliance on long-tail pages without really understanding what they do or the long-tail theory in principle. It has always been assumed that just having a few hundred long-tail pages will eventually bring the traffic they need for huge terms as well, but naturally this hasn’t paid off. My advice was more in regards to information architecture than SEO, although the ultimate goal was the same, and I fully expect it to pay off over the next month or two.
In my opinion this is also an area where a SEO company should thrive, and why I think sole SEO companies are likely to die out as larger companies with teams of content writers and a marketing division are likely to take over.
That sounds like a consultant to me.
I’m sorry to hear that you were one of the many people to be cheated by a SEO company, and I mostly agree with the kind of stuff that you’ve stated regarding SEO as a practice. Hopefully it will be a lesson to those who do perform SEO work, in that they shouldn’t make promises they cannot keep and that they should truly understand what they’re doing to a business before they take up any role in consulting that business.
First of all, this is an account of someone’s experience with a SEO consultant, not a story. Secondly, you’ve produced nothing but a blanket statement. If you don’t do what has been said then please enlighten us with what you would do if in a similar situation with a client.
ULTiMATE, thanks for the well thought out advice and responses. I appreciate the time you took to help.
I feel now like there may be some usefulness to a true SEO expert, but only if it came from a very reputable firm that was willing to contribute content writing to the effort. And this will likely cost a lot, and it seems like hiring a cheaper or outsourced firm will only bring disaster.
And there’s a lingering problem with SEO, it seems like you either find your way to no. 1 with a lasting stable presence or mangle your site pointlessly and get dinged into submission, with no middle ground between the two extremes.
Let’s say there are 100 website owners hiring SEO experts to help them compete for the same keyword.
There are 10 items listed per page of a Google search.
That means that of those 100 websites a maximum of 10 can be on the first page. I say maximum because one website may get multiple pages on page one, but for argument’s sake, lets say each website gets one entry out of the first 100 listings.
That means that for at least 90% of those websites, SEO can do no better than page 2, at least 80% can do no better than page 3, at least 70% can do no better than page 4, and so on.
The odds of getting on page one are 9:1 against. How much would you be prepared to gamble on those odds?
After reading your post I think this is the crux of the problem you’ve had.
SEO is ultimately about a good content and site but it’s also about knowing the ropes, doing the appropriate optimization, and seeing things not through the eyes of the best UI designer or Display Advertiser or Social Media Manager but the search user to back into the experience robots will have.
However you just don’t get that at a small engagement. To your point, you end up creating the content, making the placements, doing the work.
SEO firms can help drive traffic, but not only do you have to weed out the garbage, you have to be ready to give them enough legs to be able to make an impact. That means time and budget. If you can’t afford the right support level then you’re either skimping on quality and diving into silly tricks or just not getting the full elements needed to rock. I tend to suggest lumping SEO with other search work as it ups the project, shares efficiencies and helps measure A to B but I’ve also had the chance to work with some great firms who themselves readily admit that they’re less algorithm masters and more resources to build you killer, and indexable, content.
I have to say that this thread is bashing an entire industry based on one experience. I’d say just like with Plumbing, Painting, Home Building, etc you will find Excellent, Good, Bad and Terrible companies. I completely disagree blanketing all SEO’s and SEO companies based on your experience.
You said:
"But then, after they’ve implemented lousy backlinks and forum posts and mini sites, you’ll find things getting worse. “Oops,” they’ll tell you “Apparently google is dinging us, you’ll have to rewrite them or readjust your strategy to make up for this and go in a different direction.”
Here you just summed up the Fun times and SEO expert has when dealing with Google and its algorithm changes. You can choose to believe that you can do one strategy and that you will be good forever but that is just not how Google or any of the other Search Engines work. You have to continually build link and use SEO strategies as they evolve.
As the owner of an SEO company I can tell you that we do all the work and do not just tell the client what to do. You can say that you can find all the information online about how to do SEO yourself, and that is mostly true, but I can read how to remodel my bathroom online too but if I really tried it I am sure it would be a disaster. Paying an SEO company (that has the experience and results to prove they know what their doing) makes sense as it saves you valuable time and lets you focus on your core business and not marketing it as much.