Anyone can claim to be an SEO Expert. This can become problematic when a self-declared “SEO Guru” turns out to be completely out of touch with current search engine optimization practices. Many of these self-styled savants also turn out to be fast talkers and very persuasive, so they can still get lucrative consulting gigs despite shady credentials that would get torn apart with a small amount of analysis. Sadly, many people find out that their consultant is lacking in knowledge when a campaign fails miserably, or when rankings disappear from search engines altogether.
For the unsophisticated site owner, the dishonest SEO salesperson usually looks a lot more attractive than the one in the white hat. An ethical optimization consultant will tell you that rankings take time, that you shouldn’t expect “dramatic overnight results” and that your business plan should anticipate slow growth and patience. Meanwhile, the people who get their SEO leads by spamming will tell you that you can have a first page position “guaranteed” on Google in a few weeks. They don’t tell you that it will be a ranking for a long-tail phrase nobody would realistically type in, and that their guarantee is fulfilled as long as any one of your keywords gets to the first page.
In many cases, we find that people have been trusting an “SEO Expert” with no real SEO knowledge. Even worse, we get customers who bought “optimization” in the past for thousands of dollars when the only deliverable was a submission to a batch of search engines, or links on sites that will host your URL on a South Asian page with 500 links to casinos, money making schemes, and online pharmacies. For a couple of dollars out of pocket, the SEO consultant has walked away with a 95% markup on something that is more likely to sink your rankings than raise them. We once even ran across an SEO huckster who was charging a client $3400 a month for links like these, and he claimed that they provided “international flavor” despite their low value. When we had the client turn these links off, amid protests from the other vendor, the client’s rankings improved.
Other clients will often go for the SEO company that takes them straight into Black Hat territory. We have had to turn away business from prospects who paid for cloaking, auto-generated content, and bad links, then got banned by search engines. While it is occasionally possible to rescue a site that has been penalized for intentional SEO issues, it isn’t possible to guarantee that the site won’t be banned for years. A site that has been reincluded in the index may also be under permanent scrutiny for search engines, so any future SEO work would have to be more above-board than an average campaign.
As a general rule, you should not retain a company that sent you a spam email promising you great results for just a few dollars. In reality, great results cost more money, and they are worth it. You should also be a bit chagrined is you got an unsolicited email based on a click from one of your Pay-Per-Click ads, since you effectively paid for the spam message with your own marketing dollars. Most good SEO companies can gather leads based on their reputations, search engine positions, or through relationships with other reputable organizations. Many companies that promise cheap SEO results will do little or nothing to improve your site rankings, and the only silver lining is that they didn’t destroy your site’s search engine trust factors in the process.
Learning a little bit about SEO is usually a great way to find a reputable SEO expert or consultant. Many people with advanced SEO skills will still hire management companies to do specialized work that takes more time or resources than the average individual could perform alone. Also, good SEO companies have processes in place that can streamline implementation and provide you with superior results. At Web.com Search Agency, we take a certain amount of time to educate our customers about several different aspects of the optimization process. By presenting our product in reference to accepted SEO principles, we can help guide customer expectations and allow for the patience necessary to make a campaign successful. By turning our customers into more educated consumers, they become evangelists for quality SEO practices, and in turn help more people learn how to get better rankings without taking unnecessary risks or falling victim to SEO scam artists.
