Sometimes customers refuse to take our advice because for an odd reason. In order to get their Web sites found on search engines, we recommend eliminating duplicate content, adding new text to important website pages, improving link popularity, and fixing code errors that prevent search engine spiders from reading their site. However, these customers won’t follow through on our recommendations because “everyone else” is getting away with practices that we are advising against.
For example, we have customers who point out competitors who are holding on to #1 spots based on reciprocal links, sites with barely a sentence of content, spammy text, irrelevant page titles (like “home”), bad code, poor URL formatting, text embedded in Flash, and a minuscule link profile. It can be a challenge to recommend expensive and time consuming solutions to someone who sees a trend in the other direction. Since we want our clients to succeed, we need to counsel them to avoid the temptations that come with sloppy SEO.
At some point, most people have heard the motherly question “if everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?” Most kids who hear this question are usually in trouble for something minor that the “other kids” were caught doing at the same time. Customers who have this mentality usually don’t have all the facts, and it is our job to illustrate them, since (as a search optimization and marketing agency) we would be the first to take the blame if we did not actively prevent our clients from jumping off a search engine rankings cliff.
In some cases, your competitors can break search engine rules with impunity. There are a variety of reasons that badly optimized sites show up at the top of search engine rankings. A site that has been around for a long time has a certain degree of credibility. A site with a lot of backlinks for relevant subject matter can rank well. Some sites hold top spots because they have nothing more than a domain name that exactly matches the search term. A heavyweight site, like the official website of a popular magazine or newspaper, can even present (or “cloak”) material one way for search engines and another way for readers, without getting pulled out of the listings. Search engine algorithms also treat different lines of business with separate rules, so you could conceivably violate a slew of search engine guidelines without losing a spot in Google’s rankings, and you may even get ahead, until your business vertical gets noticed.
A reputable search engine optimization or marketing agency will always recommend against following the crowd if that means violating best practices. For one thing, a robust SEO program is going to involve link building, code, and content changes that are designed to get lasting results. Additionally, your assumption should be that search engines are going to be more skeptical and judgmental of your site than that of your “neighbor.”
Another motherly phrase which you’ve probably heard is that “life isn’t fair” which is doubly true for search engines. We have seen people hold on to rankings they don’t deserve, while great sites which follow the rules languish for several months before moving up. Just like in real life, some people seem to prosper by making questionable and illegal choices, while you can’t get away with anything. At some point, the search engines generally come through and wipe out the people who have been using black hat tactics. We would not have been a search agency for 12 years if we hadn’t recommended the path with the fewest penalties. Every once in a while, Google and the media will profile companies who got their customers taken out of the search engines, and we want to ensure that your site isn’t among the group that disappears when the bad gets separated from the good.
