I have been working in the Online Marketing space for over a decade now and I have never seen such despicable sales tactics as I have in the past year, in regards to selling search engine optimization programs. It seems like its “open season” on the unsuspecting and uninformed and SEO companies are now saying, doing and promising things that they definitely shouldn’t. Yes, I realize that times are tough and that competition for work can be fierce but seriously my fellow SEO’s did you have to really go there?

So how exactly do you spot a legitimate SEO versus a Phony?

1. Guaranteed Results- In SEO, I guarantee you that there are no such things as a guarantee.  Unless you want to pay for it via “pay per click”, getting to the top of Google takes time, effort, knowledge, and a solid SEO strategy.  And yes a good SEO will get you to the top of Google but the difference is that they would never guarantee it.  If someone is guaranteeing you an SEO result, they are likely doing something that may be putting your site at risk or even worse the guarantee may be on a set of keywords that nobody searches. Being #1 on a keyword that is irrelevant doesn’t help anyone really. If an SEO guarantees placement, you can be sure that this company is a phony. 
2. Exclusive Partnerships with Google, Yahoo!, MSN- I’ve been hearing this one a lot lately and people are playing up the fact that they apparently have an “exclusive” relationship with Google and therefore can deliver you a better result. The truth is NO ONE has an exclusive relationship with Google and the other search engines.  Ranking organically is free and Google does not profit by ranking someones site over another organically. If you’d like to read more about Google’s SEO Policy, please click here. If an SEO tells you that they have a special relationship with Google, run away quickly.
3. Misuse of the Word “Optimization” - Lately, I’ve seen all sorts of sales people convince clients that they are optimizing a website when, in fact, they do not truly optimize. Take for example many of the local directory sites that claim they are organically optimizing a site when in fact all they are doing is putting in optimization code into a one page website.  By and large, a one page website cannot and will not show up high in the rankings because it is a one page website. Im afraid you are going to have to do a little more than that to grow your positioning.  If someone tells you they are optimizing your website, make sure that they are doing more than just putting in code. 

I am reminded of the recent Real Estate boom when anyone and everyone was a real estate agent or mortgage loan officer. The entrance barriers were low and the Industry was largely unregulated. SEO is no different. Anyone can claim they are an SEO expert. Hopefully, and unlike the mortgage industry in 2008, I sincerely hope we can withstand the bad name that these SEO Phonies are giving us.

Tags: fakes, good SEO, phonies, Search engine optimization

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.