Hang around in the SEO circles long enough and you’ll find no shortage of anecdotes about poorly-served clients and agencies that just don’t get it. I’ve certainly seen my share.
There are still businesses out there selling “search engine submission” services – I had a VP at a marketing company explain to me just a few weeks ago how they were providing this for all their clients. Most knowledgeable SEOs consider this a scam, but in this case I was pretty confident the marketing company just hadn’t done their due diligence. Not that that’s any excuse…
It’s mind-boggling, but not when you consider that most entrepreneurs, especially small business owners, are way too busy running their shows to keep up on search engine technology. That means the companies selling them SEO services get to slack off. There is no watchdog outside this two-partner relationship.
For $30/month Sam’s Club will sell you SEO. What are you buying? For most people I’d say peace of mind – the vague idea that your SEO is being “taken care of.” Maybe that is worth the thirty bucks. But is it getting your website anywhere?
Most SEO agencies operate on monthly or annual contracts. In the interest of scalability they standardize as much as possible, automating wherever duplicate tasks occur. Build it like a franchise and you can expand almost limitlessly – if you’ve read The E-Myth Revisited this should resonate.
So services are offered as a “bolt on” to your existing marketing – a standard rate, a long list of deliverables that may, at any point, be going on behind the scenes. The agency sends over a ranking/traffic report once a month, and as long as the numbers are in the black the client keeps paying and SEO agency stays in business.
Here’s a question: if the SEO agency sat back and did nothing, would those numbers still go up?
Or better yet: how can you correlate the traffic growth to what specific actions the agency has taken on your behalf?
The dirty little secret is that sometimes the people doing the work are just coming up with ways to be busy – ways to justify whatever monthly charge they’re bringing in for the service. Filling time cards.
Chances are if you don’t know what your SEO agency has done in the last 3-4 months they’re not doing much of value. SEO isn’t all “under the hood” work. It has a lot to do with creative marketing – building compelling content and sharing it with the world, attracting attention and links. The kinda thing that’s hard to miss if you’re paying any attention to your own website.
There’s no easy answer here. No bulleted list.
There’s just this: understand that your SEO strategy is central to your online marketing strategy – which today should be a huge part of your business plan or, at least, your business awareness (since business plans are overrated).
So if you’re not aware of how, exactly, the SEO services you’ve been paying for are benefiting your business what makes you think they’re doing a drip of good?
UPDATE: here’s a nice post from Rishil at Explicitly.me on the Search Engine Submission scam – he hits it square on with this one.
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I think on par with this, is the people who call up saying “we’re in partnership with Google and have look through your Adwords bids…”
It’s praying on the weak in my opinion. All just to make a few bucks and from what I’ve seen it usually just ends in burned bridges and a bad rep.
Yeah that’s pretty low. A shame to think people are taken in by this. I’ve had people tell me their “last SEO company had an inside man in Google.” At that point I’m inclined to walk away – when they’re coming to the table with that kind of expectation total reeducation is a brick wall.
We’d like to the think that the market will adjust – that companies who engage in these tactics will suffer in the long run. But an aggressive sales team and PR campaign can go a long way.
“At that point I’m inclined to walk away – when they’re coming to the table with that kind of expectation total reeducation is a brick wall.”
I totally agree Mike. I know this is easier said than done, especially in more difficult times like we’re dealing with now, but whenever you can, it can pay to NOT take on a client when you’ve a bad feeling about them.