First Rule About SEO Fight Club is – Don't Talk About SEO Fight Club!
There is a reason I don’t have clients I work for plastered all over my site, or home page, even though it would probably help us make new sales.
There’s a reason I don’t take linkbacks from SEO clients from their site to boost my own sites ranking in Google even though I’m missing a big trick SEO companies use to rank their own sites. We only take linkbacks from web design clients and even then sometimes I nofollow it and usually today we use Hobo or Hobo-web as the linkback (purely because that direct link can mean sales if people like that site).There’s a reason we only host clients we design and build (or maintain) websites for, not linkbuild to, on our servers today.
There’s a reason you should never ever talk in public or private forums about getting SEO done on your site (unless it’s just that, onsite search engine optimisation).
That reason is Google. Google doesn’t owe you, or us as a bona-fide seo, anything. If Google decides you’re doing something that makes Google look stupid, you might be in trouble.
I can go on record as saying I have never bought a paid link in 3+ years for a client as Hobo (apart from Yahoo). I can consider myself white hat even if I don’t put much faith in ‘hats’, I don’t spam people’s sites, I don’t use any black hat techniques as it’s too risky for my clients. 99% of the time I think I stick to Google’s guidelines (maybe it’s actually a 100% for clients). I don’t make silly claims like guaranteed first page rankings although I usually get them with a lot of work and say it’ll take me a year. I’m not secretive which SEO techniques I use. It makes for some boring sales copy and crappy rankings for our own Hobo site sometimes let me tell you.
Why tell Google you are trying to manipulate their results, even if it is to make their index better (in your opinion lol)? Do you really want your logo on the site of a SEO company that Google identifies as breaking it’s terms and conditions (which change quite a lot these days)?
Don’t ever tell anyone you have a SEO on board. Don’t ever let a SEO company say they are fondling your results either. Ask your seo company why your seo company has a link at the bottom of your pages, and determine for yourself the risks.
Sometimes it makes those top ten results seem a bit less, well, natural, doesn’t it (?), when someone else is telling Google they got you to number 1 for *whatever* 
I may as well go on record as saying some White Hat Shock troops who say to this post “you must have something to hide” are frankly, Naive to think Google (indeed anybody) is looking after their interests – if I did have something to hide i wouldn’t post this tosh.
I just spotted a person talking on a forum about potentially hiring us. I just think that’s a bad idea that’s all, even if I am sticking to the rules.
In the end, each to his own, and maybe I should stop watching conspiracy movies and wearing tin foil over my napper
Written by Shaun Anderson
I think this is a bit paranoid ideas. From my opinion all SEO can be separated into two major group: internal web site code optimization and external link building. First part is completely legal even from official Google point of view (like nofollow manipulations). Therefore nothing wrong with mentioning that this part was done by some SEO company.
Hi Shaun
I have some sympathy with your ideas on this and I can understand the approach of simply not putting your head above the parapet. In some ways it does go back to exactly what SEO is – are we “manipulating rankings” or are we simply making sites the best they can be in order that they deserve to rank highly. I’ve always taken the latter approach as my guiding principle despite some clients still expecting a bolt-on approach using some fancy tricks.
There are obviously some grey areas, particularly in the link building side of things but hey, Google force us to try get links to some degree by not ranking good content appropriately because the page it’s on hasn’t got enough PageRank to get into the main index.
There is a sense that if we allow ourselves to be tagged as manipulators then we’re damned if we don’t put our heads above the parapet to say that actually we’re trying to create good content and a good user experience. Bit of a cleft stick really.
Keep up the good work
@Luxs I heard being scared keeps you safe lol
I get a bit wound up when I see websites with ‘SEO Company’ stuck in the footer. I wonder if the clients know that their SEO company has done that and I wonder if the SEO company has explained the ramifications of it.
I’ll be willing to bet they haven’t!
I agree totally – keep a low profile. Not just for Google’s sake but for the sake of your clients competitors and your SEO competitors.
@Gregor – I have done it in the past, but every web dev client that has a link of mine in their footer knows about it, and as I say, I just don’t do this any more for this site, and I have a NO LINK TO THIS SITE policy for client sites I am linkbuilding for. When I look at some link profiles I am frankly embarrassed for the SEO involved. But then again, it works… still. Reminds me of my Broken Windows post actually….
WOW this is a great post….Atleast you are honest with one thing that it is difficult to rank well for sites
Man SEO Companies dont agree with this…They will still yell that they can get a site in the first ten in 3 months!!
Good observations from an agency point of view, but it raises problems for an in-house SEO such as myself.
Am I to request a different title than “SEO Manager”, or do I exclude myself from important professional networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter altogether? It seems a bit disingenuous to do so.
The simple fact of a company using SEO support, whether contracted or in-house – shouldn’t cause hysterics from Google et al. Of course, “should” and “does” are not necessarily equal.
All in all I think too much has been made of Google’s targeting of SEO professionals. If Google does give special scrutiny to sites that are “SEO’d” it will certainly turn out to be a technique of with diminishing returns as the SEO talent pools increases.
Are you trying to stay under the radar Aaron?
You raise a good question. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with an individual calling himself a SEO but as you say Google are certainly profiling seo these days it seems
normally when a client has SEO company in their foot, put in by their seo company, its to enable views or direct competition to see that its this company that has optimized and possibly designed this web site; not always an intention to link build.
I love it when an SEO company in our industry starts talking about work they have done for a client.
You pick up some really useful metrics on what they claim to have achieved – eg increase of visitors, ranking for particular terms, amount of online vs offline business. This is often a good point of comparison and also helps you understand the value of your own online marketing efforts.
A+ for transparency
D for intelligence
Ben it’s nice to see links from all their client sites when they get booted out of Google lol – talk about Turkey Shoot
You can leave the “fight” out of your statement… We’ve been following the first rule of SEO Club since 2003: Don’t talk about what’s in SEO Club.
If an SEO company can’t build their PR without stealing it from clients, they’re worthless. Clients should never be identified in any way…
I agree it is a bit paranoid, but hard, honest work is seldom punished, so you can’t really lose with it. However, Google uses a robot (not a person) to rank the sites. If you are an seo consultant then you would have done research with a number of test websites trying out different methods and knowing what makes the bot happy and mad. Some cases allowing you to manipulate it, the problem with that is no one knows when the bot will get smarter, invalidating all your research.
“Google uses a robot (not a person) to rank the sites” – Google also uses human evaluatators and spam fighters.
PS – I know how to keep the bot happy
This is a topic that I think is so ambiguous as of late. Who has Google profiled already (if they are indeed doing so)? Do these profiled SEOs’ websites suddenly drop off Google’s search index? Do the Search Engine companies share info on profiled SEOs? “Optimization” seems quite subjective. I wonder what importance Google puts on footer links anyways…
I don’t know just how natural Google’s results have ever been and with them releasing their own guideline as to how to do SEO I think they’ve resigned themselves to having to accept SEO to a degree. I’ve never cared much for hats – I hate hat-hair
but I think have a pretty good idea on how to connect sites together. Usually there is a pattern behind link buying or other devious behaviour.
Occasionally I break out my tinfoil hat and plot and plan for a bit, but generally speaking I don’t see the harm in listing a site in a portfolio (I would recommend that if you do so that you keep to G’s TOS however).