I’d love to share the back story to this but unfortunately I can’t. Anyway, I’ve been asked to recommend a seo to somebody who’s looking to compete in a spectacularly competitive niche. After twenty minutes tying myself in knots I thought – sod it -Â I need to get this down on paper… well sort of.
EDIT – Forgive me for this a lot of it is kind of cobbled together but that is how my brain works – better out than in (probably).
Knowing what I know? How would “I” choose (or even recommend) a seo?
Would “I” find a seo agency on Google? Totally IRONIC, but no.
I don’t want a seo who ranks top in Google ONLY OR MOSTLY because it has links from client sites (even though they might, at last, be blogging now). EDIT – I mean lets face it every seo co has links from some clients, even us, but it makes up a minuscule amount of our link profile. We don’t take links from SEO clients though – only web development jobs – EDIT. They ( a seo company who ranks just because of links from client sites) won’t be able to bring those guns to bear for my site… ever. Probably. Of course there are seo companies there in Google that deserve to be there too – which makes it a minefield for me. EEK – and stay well clear of Google News!
“I” wouldn’t go with a traditional ad agency who does seo. I used to be an in-house seo (the only one) for an ad agency (who was at the time no1 in Google for ad agency terms of course). I remember staying up for 3 days straight once…. ah I have fond memories of noscript abuse before I read Google’s guidelines. Generalisation of course – there will be good seo working for ad agencies (wonder where they will end up?)
“I” wouldn’t go with a web development company that ‘does’ seo because frankly making good websites is about 5% of the job done. Of course, while a good site is incredibly important, in a competitive niche it’s all about link building and/perhaps rather website promotion. Making an seo friendly site in 2009 has never been easier with all the free seo advice published online, why every body offers it. Of course, we are a seo co who does web design and development. It’s a tad of a dichotomy. It’s hard to work out which is which. A seo friendly website should be a bog standard in 2009 – but it still isn’t.
“I” would avoid like the plague a seo company who cold called me (do ethical seo companies cold call these days?) We are burst to the gunnels with work, and we’ve never asked anybody ever for work. some might defend cold calling – fair enough. Show me the testimonials from clients that say ” I was cold called by this seo company and I am thrilled with the results” and I will change my mind. (I’m not just talking about the guy starting out either of course – where it MIGHT be acceptable).
“I” would avoid unsolicited emails offering seo services as little better than confidence trickster spam. Even Google says this is what to do. There’s little satisfaction in any guarantees in this game.
What If the SEO has big brands as clients? Big Brand SEO is far, far different from in the trenches seo for clients who don’t have any links to begin with. For my mind it’s EASIER (if the brand in question has a lot of domain authority just waiting to be unleashed (or partner sites) – but of course that’s a generalisation – depends entirely on the site in question and the competition. Be prepared to get your wallet out though to feed that cash cow. I might might change my mind in the future, but i don’t plaster my clients all over my home page because simply – I don’t want Tom, Dick and Harry to know who they are, or be seen as responsible for their entire link profile.
What If “I” can’t find them at all on Google? I’d question if they know enough about generating decent links to compete in the wild wild west of the seo keyword terms vertical. If they are nowhere on that, they haven’t taken the opportunity to prove their mettle in an obvious competitive arena. Hey, I know the mantra – “we’re too busy to go for our own terms using white hat methods)”. What – you’ve always been too busy? You have no terms? You have a crap website? No authority at all in Google for any term? You don’t have one person in your agency that’s passionate about SEO to write a blog? Or get involved in forums helping people out? That’s what passionate seo peeps do in my experience – share it. So I personally would need some semblence of passion on their own site.
What about looking for SEO in Forums? Some of the people who shout loudest in forums are those looking for business. Sure, there are good folks in there, and I won a client 2 years ago in a forum who I have still got, worth nearly £xx,xxx.xx to me, but i had to get involved in an inane, petty and bitter catfight to win it – sod that. Now I only spend time in forums to help folks out to frankly to build our brand and mind share. In fact, I’ll be spending my time in the next month at the SEO Dojo where I receive no compensation at all and wouldn’t take any.
…and that’s the GOOD advice in forums. Some tell you to check Google, some tell you to actually type into Google “the best company in the UK”. Hmmm, no that’s just because somebody with a trusted site has written a post about that term. There’s no way anybody can say they are the best seo company anywhere without looking like total fools.
What about SEO who criticised other seo in private? I’d be wary of any seo who claimed to be better than anybody else, or privately criticised another seo company because frankly, most seo companies don’t know the workings of any other seo company. It’s a sign of desperation for me. So is publicly outing a competitors strategy, just for the out. That comes with experience though i think.
What about those SEO who are acclaimed best? See above point. I’d prefer experienced at any rate but nobody knows how much pressure these top seo guys are under at any one time.
What about paid membership sites? I’d only get involved in these as a paying customer if I was serious about doing the work myself or had someone I trusted or employed to action the advice in these forums. SEO and LINKBUILDING is hard work and all the tools in the box doesn’t make you a carpenter.
What about seo companies with excellent reviews on review sites? Hmmm… dig down past those excellent reviews and nearly all the time you’ll find exactly why they needed those good reviews. (No, honestly)
Would I go for pay-per-performance seo linkbuilding? Well, you might think that will get me working, but my priority will always be with the clients who drop a cheque on my door mat every month. I wouldn’t ask a plumber to install a shower and expect him to get paid after I have ten showers. A seo should be able to give you some form of real testimonials – and you should make contact with these people. I am willing to ‘take a flier’ on some projects – but I have enough of them at the moment – a lot with clients i have worked with over the years too -Â to consider any more.
If I typed something (kind of obscure) into Google and got an exact match domain back with the exact same search as my query I’d skip past the first couple as its far easier to rank an exact match domain in most sectors – you don’t even need to be a seo to do this.
What about SEO Bloggers? Hmmm… that’s me. Being a seo blogger doesn’t mean your a good seo. I know plenty of good seo who don’t blog. I blog simply for content for my site, to connect with like minded folk, for sales, and because if anybody thinks i don’t know what I am doing they can hold me to task right here (and I learn something) and I build a site and community (can I say that?) of folks with a passion for marketing online. I think blogging is the best creative form of social media and may always will be. The blog is important to me – in fact, my subscriber count is probably the one thing online metric I care about these days (apart from natural – or nearly natural – links).
What about Pay-Per-Click or sponsored results? Well, “I” wouldn’t ever use some of the companies listed there. Of course, it’s an advertising channel (one we never use) and it’s an easy way to drum up business. I just prefer to somehow validate clients – they should find us. I don’t want to use the scatter-gun approach in this sector. I’d rather try and build a brand and let them come to us… Of course, time will tell if that is a naive strategy.
SO What Should You Do?
First educate yourself and make sure you have reasonable expectations. SEO is about billable hours, not £100 per month programs. The more budget you have, the more hours you will get. A first phase SEO strategy can be conceived in a few hours but need 100 hours to deploy it. If I was spending thousands of pounds I’d spend weeks researching any potential seo (which is why recommending one is not so easy for me).
“I” would try and identify Passion in a seo – corny as it seems, and not just because it’s in the copy of their home page. Anybody needing SEO (or rather LINKBUILDING) in a competitive niche needs to understand nobody knows how Google works (although the basic recipe for seo success have been the same for years). I’d go for a small company and work with them for at least a year (assuming early indications are positive) but there are risks even here. I would ask for references.
SEO is so different these days. in fact, SEO is so 2003. It truly is about search engine marketing these days and the more than ten ways free ways to get into Google results. It’s not just about getting better positions on narrow terms, though sometimes it is depending on what you’re getting paid to do.
I’d spend time trying to find those in the industry with a passion for seo, and of course, to correctly identify those, you might even need to be a geek in it. Even then, those who are social in the seo world don’t necessarily make the best seo (but who you know in seo land can get you links and advice – just as in the real world).
OK so I’ve probably insulted everybody in that round up and I didn’t even particularly mean to (maybe even myself in a couple of cases). I hope I’ve got the tone of this post correct because I am certainly not try to tarnish anyone. But this was a post borne 100% out of me trying to tell someone how to identify a good seo.
And while I have a few peeps in mind i may contact…
Knowing what i know (and if I didn’t?)
I’m glad I’m not looking for a seo company.
Not offended in the slightest – everything you’ve said seems to be reasonable. Only bit I’d disagree with is the big brand SEO being simpler. It should be simpler – as the link profile should offer a sound basis for SEO. Trying to get changes made on some companies websites (even just title changes) takes so long that the difficulty is being able to do everything possible to improve positions in a timely fashion – and as results are often ROI/CPA led rather than position led (and on a far larger scale than small business SEO) can make different challenges ahead.
You make a good point about getting changes made – depends on the team your working with though. Maybe I should have worked that bit out a bit more. Cheers for the comment.
You raise some very valid points in this post Hobo, but after reading it and trying to look at it from a clients point of view, I think I would end up being more insecure then when I started out! Why? because its giving the impression that its impossible to decide on what SEO company to employ; Dont take the cheap (agreed its a waste) but the expensive are usually out of your league. Look for reputation but ignore the ones who post testimonials as they are shouting about themselves and if they have a reputation thats to good then they are probably to busy to be effective anyway. Dont take the number 1 ranks…ok…but then how can you have confidence in their ability if they don’t rank for expected terms, and vice versa if they dont rank, they are not capable. I think you get my drift… and believe me I know exactly where you are coming from as the whole damn thing is a quagmire for clients and indeed for SEOs! Choosing and indeed recommending an SEO company is most certainly a minefield but its not just SEO, its the whole industry. I cant count the amount of times I have recommended another reliable service provider, from Hosting to PPC to web design, only to have he client complain about something later on down the line even though I may have worked with that person or company for an extended period and never had problems, it only takes one client to rock the boat and of course this can endanger future prospects (its “your only as good as your last job” syndrome) for yourself, your reputation and your partner company. It makes both choosing a service provider and recommending one the minefield that your referring to and with some many variables involved in SEO, web design, tracking, ROI, algorithm changes, social media and search, the list is endless, it can be a very hard job to meet client expectations… and indeed, when its a recommendation, your own as well. (thanks for making my brain hurt this morning, its really appreciated :P)
justin – Thanks for taking the time out of your day to read it :) I hoped i’d successfully moved away from long posts but this was a question that did indeed hurt my brain too. I never said it would help choose a seo company – that’s why the title wasn’t “how to choose the best seo company” – if you noticed my url, that’s what it was supposed to be. However, after putting my confused thoughts down on the blog I realised I wasn’t answering that question very well!
Some constructive advice from a potential client. I’m tasked with obtaining an SEO company to outsource one of our service lines. Having read through your website however, I had to ask myself if yours is the sort of company we would work with? You appear extremely opinionated and impress on me that you would preach to us what we need rather than listening to what we want. I can’t help but notice numerous veiled slurs on your competitors. I note you have not named names but slagging off competitors does not sit well with us at all. We do not engage in any mud slinging of any sort and we do not expect our suppliers to. You say “What about SEO who criticised other seo in private?” yet your website openly criticising competitors in other articles. “Plastering clients over the home page” is actually something we look for. We are seeking an SEO company that works with clients of our size and this is a tick in the box in our selection criteria. Your company claims to be “one of Scotland’s and the UK’s best seo companies” yet you advise on avoiding such companies at all costs? Perhaps you should think about what you write from a clients perspective when you next cast your net.
Hi Jaqueline – It would have been nice if you had left your email so I could discuss more in private (I wouldn’t have published it) however i will put my thoughts down. I’m wary of getting into annonymous discussions but I will this time because you may make fair points and I like discussing things. Opinionated – Yes, of course I am. I am passionate about what i do. I work 16 hours a day trying to sift through data to help my clients and I see a lot of stuff on the net that irks me. Veiled slurs on my competitors? I’m not sure what article you are referring to and my blog is reasonably visited so I’m sure if I upset anyone I would have heard about it. Some of my posts might be a bit off the wall but I didn’t think I took part in veiled slurs. In the past, I’ve outed tactics that rip people off. I don’t believe in outing folks in public just because they are competitors – I have a ton of pals in the seo comunity and I didn’t think i was making that many enemies. Maybe they’re just keeping me close lols – I may from time to time criticise people’s public opinions but they know as well as I thats the risk you take when you OPENLY voice an opinion. openly criticising competitors – again which articles are you referring to? “Plastering clients over the home page†is actually something we look for. OK I understand this might give you some reassurance, but i tell all my clients not to even tell anyone they are doing linkbuilding in any form from a competitor point of view at least. i can see the pros and cons of doing both. My company claims – I never used the word expert on this site until I trained a company in glasgow and the week later they had “expert seo services” on their home page. i didn’t even call myself a seo until a few years ago. This blog is as good as my personal blog but I am reminded daily it is a corporate blog. As my MD points out this is a selling tool and we need to at least play the selling game a little – if he was hiring a plumber he wouldn’t hire one who said “well, I’m not really an expert at this sort of thing”. This post wasn’t meant to tarnish my industry or my competitors – it was an honest appraisal in my view of the pitfalls of choosing an seo company from my experience. I blog about what I think about – and someone asked me to recommend a seo. its a hard thing to do even for me.
Shaun: Much more than merely a blurb, it is an encyclopedia. Could not help but laughing, crying and nodding my head as I read through it. And, I don’t normally read long dissertations. Unfortunately, only those of us who have tried SEO and made the many mistakes as we followed the winding roads to dead ends can understand! Is it better to meander blindly? Perhaps so, since it might not be so complicated!
“Some constructive advice from a potential client.” – should most certainly be addressed as Jaqueline is making , in a much more direct and eloquent manner than I did, the issues that a client faces in the selection process for SEO services. Good luck Hobo!
No worries mate, its one of those convos that needs to be had and still remains unanswered. Recommending any company is not easy, and though I see where Jaqueline is coming from, it serves to highlight some of the difficulties we face in the industry as a whole between clients and service providers, even though this wasn’t the main aim of the post! To Jaqueline, I think you need to appreciate what this post represents. All of us face these issues and all Hobo has done is highlight them in a effort to “voice” his reasoning and the different factors involved in weighting up the pros and cons of making the best choice for clients and ultimately the best recommendations. Far from being a black mark against him, in my own eyes, it shows someone who thinks long and hard about the issues and how they affect all parties involved. Simply put, its searching for the best result (story of our lives!).
I’ve just done a quick SEO review for a friend who has been getting her PPC company to do the SEO work (for an extra fee). My mind boggled. The HTML titles contain the category and brand name only – and not the page name. Hence within a category the HTML titles of every page are all identical. The meta descriptions are 100% identical on every page – and 500+ characters (so truncate after some bland nothingness). And all the URLs from an old version of the site return a 200 code and show a dummy version of one category page with a rubbish title like XXXX dummy copy (haven’t put real text so you can’t find it!) So maybe horses for courses is a good suggestion …
Shaun, Thankyou for your reply. You will get my email if we decide to approach you. My comments come from an unbiased clients perspective and not from within your industry. I’m sure you do have many friends in your industry which is admirable. Whilst this may build a community which can surround you with adoration amongst your peers, the opinions are quite off-putting from a clients perspective. Reading through your website your company seems to be “angry” at the world as opposed to being passionate and helpful. I had a quick browse through a few of your pages and the tone is hard and at times aggressive. There are posts where you have “outed” scams etc which again is admirable but these should really be reported to bodies such as trading standards to deal with. They have the correct investigative tools in place. Otherwise it has the effect of scaring clients off – certainly in our case. I don’t know much at all about SEO but what I have learned today is that there are two camps. Those that are out to surround themselves with controversy and slag off others (without neccessarily naming them) and those that quietly do a good job. It’s the latter that we’re interested in. Can you imagine a profession such as accountants or doctors saying stuff like “Avoid at all costs…scammers…etc” As I said before we are uncomfortable with some of the articles and sales copy used on your site. I’m sure you have an excellent reputation – we just wouldn’t want to be associated with any controversy.
Hi Jaqueline very cool that you’ve responded. :) I might actually ASK POTENTIAL CLIENTS in a post what they are looking for from a seo. I must say I’m not angry in any way lols. I don’t think I have any adoring peers either lol. This is honestly JUST ME :) Most of the folks I connect with online are doing exactly the same thing as me – ie helping folk out with SEO. Regarding outing companies who scam people, thought I was doing a public service. You do realise there is no industry body for seo? There’s no validation program Google lays down for this sort of thing? There’s actually very little you can do if your scammed except give them a headache at the root where the scam is peddled – on Google. My reputation is my reputation and all I can do is work hard. Of course none of my clients are associated with any controversy and ever have been. I’ve assisted clients get thousands of pounds of reimbursement from the previous seo companies too. We want to be seen as different from other seo companies. We want to be seen as creative and pretty transparent. you might see this as being aggressive, but I can assure you, you’ve not seen me aggressive. :) My tone is just my tone – a lot of the time tongue in cheek – I am aware it probably puts some clients off but it attracts the kind of clients we work for years with and as a result the blog accounts for 50% of the work we do (as well as tons of work we pass up). EDIT – Could I be more professional. Probably. I never started my own business PURELY to be professional. I want to have FUN. Welcome to my blog. :)
Some interesting discussions going on here. Jaqueline I was wondering how we can find people/company who “quietly do a good job. It’s the latter that we’re interested in. ” I and you wouldn’t have been reading and commenting on this blog (or would have even known about his company) if Shaun had been sitting silent and working behind the doors. Moreover I don’t read/follow many SEO blogs but among few of the ones I read, this has been high on my list just because of the transparency and truth Shaun brings on the table. This industry is almost like magic ( atleast to me at this point of time) and the only tricks/tips we learn are from blogs like this who aren’t afraid to give them out.
After skimming through blogs and SEO sites full of hunches and information that fundamentally misunderstands and sometimes outright contradicts the facts Google has shared about their algorithms, this is the only source I trust for logical, accurate, cutting-edge SEO information. Shaun, you’ve proven it to me by outlining some of the actual scientifically-sound experiments that you have yourself done to figure out pieces of the puzzle. And, given that you’ve elevated SEO to something more logical and respectable than link farms and other shenanigans, I’m frustrated for you that so many people are still listening to shysters who tell them they need to have unique meta keywords for each of their 20k CMS pages. It’s like the plight of a doctor whose patients diagnosed themselves based on TV shows. Nobody’s mad at the patients, but it’s frustrating to try to fight the good fight while surrounded by so many people making money spreading false information, and it’s frustrating to see those patients being misled, for profit, to the patients’ detriment. Looking forward to more of the same. :)
I have had this same conversation in my head many times over, and always come to the conclusion that we’re going to keep to whatever behaviour we want on our blog, we see it as a pre-screening and vetting out of clients that we wouldn’t want anyway. if they don’t dig the humour then we’re probably not going to really gel, so they don’t deserve the special sauce. the same goes for the text heavy design, if they cant be bothered to read a little about the subject, best they head off to one of these “tell us your pain” outfits and the best of luck to them.. keep it real Hobo ;)
I thought that this was an excellent post. I know a good number of SEOs, mostly from forums and networking, ranging from white hats to black hats, and all types of grey. Some of the best SEOs that I have met don’t even have a website and just pick up clients from word of mouth. Many are also independent and only work for themselves, making money via contextual ads and affiliate sales.