As a crap seo company, we’re not passionate about seo. We don’t have staff that stay up at night looking at a site in Google SERPS wondering ‘why’. Our passion is sales. Making money selling a service that at first, can be quite intangible, and lastly, has no real benefit in Google because frankly, it’s 1999 seo.

Why do we do SEO? We want your money! That’s why we do it.

  1. ‘We need to sign you into a long term contract’ you can’t get out of even if we don’t deliver.
  2. We can’t SEO our own site for love nor money but we can yours, and we ‘can guarantee top ten positions in Google’ for your site.
  3. We advertise in Google Adwords - thats how we get our leads from Google.
  4. We need to spam your email with unsolicited junk because we’re crap at Google Adwords.
  5. We need to cold call you and ask if you are interested in SEO Services for your website because we are crap at email marketing too.
  6. We give you a report every month that details the 1,000,000 terms your site ranks for….ok, so they are none of the terms you want, and nobody ever types these into Google, but hey, what do you expect for £20,000 every year for 3 years?
  7. Who’s SEOmoz? That’s the monkey god out of Planet Of The Apes.
  8. We’ll create 100 domains for you (that we own), charge you double for the domains and put *nearly* exactly the same content on them. It won’t work of course, you’ll only get a tiny bit of residual traffic from Yahoo and MSN, but it sure looks as though we’ve done a bit of work there.
  9. Of course, ‘we know how Google works’.
  10. Of course, ‘we can’t tell you how it works - it’s a secret’.
  11. Generally, our seo services consist of putting your link on our PR 4 site home page and submitting your site to a couple of crap paid directories. Oh, we own those too….in fact, why don’t we build an entire directory out of the 100 domains we make for you? Note to self - lets roll that out for all our clients!
  12. Here - take a look at our very anonymous and vague testimonials from MR J Smith, Edinburgh….
  13. We don’t even know what ‘nofollow’ is but we use SEO LSI techniques to check your site.
  14. Oh, we can’t tell you about other client’s projects - that’s always 100% confidential
  15. We use “innovative” advertising to target ignorant people who know nothing about the pitfalls of employing a crap seo company enlightened business persons who understand the need for SEO in any advertising campaign.
  16. ‘SEO is all about….. (insert any wild black and white statement)’
  17. ‘Our search engine optimisation secrets beat Google’s ranking system’, but instead of making a fortune Donald Trump would be proud of for ourselves, we’re willing to offer our services to you for £25 per month (with a free Google Adwords voucher just in case our seo campaign turns out to be as crap as our seo, email marketing and …er…. Google Adwords campaigns.)

Snake oil is a traditional Chinese medicine used to treat joint pain. In cryptography, snake oil is a term used to describe commercial cryptographic methods and products which are considered bogus or fraudulent. The name derives from snake oil, one type of quack medicine widely available in 19th Century United States.

Snake Oil SEO is, you guessed it, ‘SEO companies’ who seem to spend their time spamming your email or cold calling you, most notably, with absurd claims like “guaranteed top ten” listings in Google or ’submission to 50,000 search engines’ and in the end deliver virtually nothing.

The fact is no SEO Company can guarantee you results in seo, and while plenty of respectable seo out there try and tell people this, a lot of seo seem to get away with telling customers the opposite and even advertising these claims in Google Adwords!

Here’s what I came across in the sponsored listings when I clicked on an ad (when I typed in ’search engine optimisation scotland’ into Google) proclaiming on the page;

“Contrary to any articles or sales hype you may read, a guaranteed top 3 listing is possible…..”

This statement is utter tosh and is just one of the reasons some think a large percentage of seo experts talk crap.

Don’t take it from me, this guy works for Google;

“someone walked up to me and pretended like he wanted to bribe me: $500,000 for a 1st place ranking. I turned him down, because no one can guarantee a #1 ranking — not even me.” Matt Cutts

And submitting your site to 50,000 search engines other than Yahoo, Google, MSN or Ask will probably bring about 10o visitors to your site over the next year, if that.

It’s a sad fact, but you’ll probably be targeted by a crap (or snake oil) seo firm long before you ever seek out a good one. Of course, you could just get lucky ;)

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