When to Say No to Your SEO Company

To begin with, let me just say that I didn't realize there were so many unscrupulous people in the marketplace who had the ability to get my attention. After all, I thought I was above the fray, considering I'm well beyond the age of gullible. Well, perhaps not. Here's what the more unscrupulous characters in the Search Engine Optimization industry are going to try to sell you and how you can recognize what's happening and in advance and just say "no."

My top 5 Abused Search Engine Optimization Services:

1. The Analysis Package: Any SEO company that's worth their salt will insist on first doing a complete and thorough onsite evaluation to bring your site up to "best practice standards." Now to do that, they need to sell you a complete "Initial Analysis Package". The one I received from SEO Company consisted of:

Up to 300 Keywords & Keyword Phrases Reported
Initial Web Site SEO Analysis Report
Initial Ranking (Benchmark) Report
Initial Competitive Intelligence Analysis Report
90 minute Telephone Consultation

Keep in mind that all of the above is compiled with the aid of automated programming that takes just a few minutes of their time to run so a majority of expense for them comes in the 90 minute phone conference. The cost of this package is about $900

Done correctly, the analytics package should be about identifying the best key works or phrases, (probably 3 or 4 tops) and then using the SEO companies analytics to determining what assets the top positioned companies have in links and content compared to you. Knowing this will allow you to estimate how long it will take to catch up to your competition, or, if it is even possible. Unfortunately it seldom gets done this way because few SEO companies want to tell you bad news right off the bat. For them it's better to let you spend $12k first.

2. The "Strategic Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Consulting Agreement." Wow, sounds impressive doesn't it? This where the SEO Company really made their money, which cost me $1,995 per month ($199.50 per hour). The key here is they require a 30 day notice of cancellation, so if you're unhappy, you end up paying for another month that you don't want unless you give them a cancellation at the beginning of each month and then void the cancelation in 30 days later if you're pleased with the results. That's always appeared to me to be an odd way of conducting business.

Within this Consulting agreement, you get 10 hours a month, but unfortunately they count the time that the computer takes to run the reports (and for me it was considerable since I already had quite a few back links) as hours that come off the clock and reduce your consulting time, time to fix problems, or link building. It also includes writing a long report to summarize what's been said and what's been done for the past week. Thus, after 6 months of this nonsense, we were moving at a snails pace and we never able to get to what was really need which was quality link building.

Remedy? First of all, the time it takes to run an automated report shouldn't come off your allotted time for the month; especially at $199.50 per hour. There's no rule in SEO that says that you can't do some on page optimization and link building at the same time, but that never seems to happen either. It becomes an either/or scenario and tends to stretch out the project timeline indefinitely.

3. Quality Link Building for the lesser talented SEO companies is definitely not their favorite activity, because to do it right, it's extremely difficult work, and when compared to the money they can make running analytic reports all day long, it's much less profitable. The greatest success in link building requires someone who can go web site by web site, to related site owners and develop relationships with each of them so that when you have some content worth adding to their site, they'll be happy to oblige. You can't push a button to accomplish that, which is why SEO companies falter at this stage. Also, truly professional SEO companies have built enough relationships in their careers that they should already know the names on a number of doors that they can open to get the process started. They shouldn't be starting at square one each and every time.

Example of Bad Link Building: At the beginning of our stint with one SEO Company, we were advised to create new content rich blog articles, and then utilize a program to spin the articles to make each of them at least 50% unique from each other, after which we then disseminated them in another program they told us about, which increased our back links by the hundreds, if not thousands in no time. Wow, it worked till Google noticed and slapped us down big time for 6 months. That advice might not have been "black hat" but it was sure enough "grey hat." Of course, they had their butt covered in the liability clause and weren't responsible.

4. On Page Analytics is the process whereby you look at how the entire web site is linked and how items of importance emphasized; from home page to all the different levels of the web site, with attention paid to:
a. Title Tags
b. Meta Descriptions
c. H-1 tags
d. Key word frequency
e. Outbound links
f. Content so all pages are indexes by Google

The above is something that all good SEO's know about, but for heavens sake get it done and stop making a big mystery out of it when it's basically nuts and bolts stuff. Either you've done it or you haven't, so just do it. Much of the time this is where an ongoing stream of cash comes from for the SEO company as they string it out for months when it should take weeks. If the client is performing the work, all the client needs is a blueprint of how each page should look in terms of the items listed above. Then if they're available to answer few questions along the way, somebody can be turned lose and just get it done!

5. Strategic Plan reviews: Sure you need to do this, but I'm looking at reviews that instead of seeing a check mark in the margin of the initial plan, each week get re written which in and of itself takes hours to complete and digest and regurgitate. You've been in front of people who seem to love hearing themselves talk; well these people just like to admire the encyclopedia they re wrote each week.

Another typical comment that you'll get from SEO companies is to remove all inbound links of no value. That's nice, but how do you do that since sending an email to the webmaster will probably result in hearing him laugh all the way to the end of cyberspace and back. Most of us know that once something gets out into cyber space that it's gone for good, and viewable forever. Ask many an aspiring actress in Hollywood about how that happens! But SEO companies will make requests like that as though all you had to do was to wave a magic wand and it would happen.

Hopefully when you see topics such as the ones I've listed above appear in front of you in the form of a SEO proposal, that you'll think back on this article and begin asking questions to determine if the relationship that you're beginning is going to be a good one or one that should be avoided. For me, the jury is still out with regard to whether SEO company sales guys really believe all the crap they tell you, or if they're just an empty suit parroting the company line.