One of my clients called me and told me he was approached by a company claiming to offer SEO consulting services. This company claimed they could do a better job than I was doing. Apparently the owner of this company recently completed the Search engine college’s course on SEM and was now ready to get into the business of finding new customers. Don’t get me wrong, the search engine college has an excellent product but maybe they need to add a segment on ethics.
Needless to say, I explained to my client that the proof is in the pudding. What is this person’s rankings for their own business? As far as I could tell, they didn’t rank well yet for any of the terms they are targeting. Plus they are making outrageous claims like, “all of their clients experienced a 40% growth web traffic last month!” If it is too good to be true there is a reason.
It isn’t true!
Here is a great example of some of the unethical and spammy work some SEO folks do. I found this blog post filled with SPAM by a “supposed” SEO firm in Illinois. Click here to view their spam. Do you really want to be associated with this type of company? The funny part is their SPAM doesn’t even help their SEO. If you are looking for an SEO specialist here are some simple things I recommend.
1. Work with a company that has been in the industry for more than five years.
2. Ask for samples of top ten placement they have achieved for clients at Google.
3. Make sure those rankings are for competitive keyword phrases. Hint: If no one is advertising for those phrases at Google Adwords, then they aren’t very competitive.
4. Ask for references and call those references.
Beware of the people who have taken a few courses and all of the sudden they are experts. It takes years of applying real SEO techniques to be a real seo professional. Just because they belong to some “umbrella organization”, doesn’t mean they are know what they are doing either.
Notice this disclaimer in small print from SEMPO’s own web site. They are one of the SEO umbrella groups the spammer mentioned above belongs to.
“SEMPO is an industry organization designed to promote search engine marketing in general, not an accreditation body for SEM firms. Membership in SEMPO is not a guarantee of a particular firm’s capabilities, nor does it signify industry approval or disapproval of their practices.”
Watch out for scammers!
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