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Being an SEO’er, you encounter a great range of people who share your job title. It does seem like everybody in Hollywood is an actor, everybody in Oxford is a professional and everybody on the internet is an SEOaffilientrepreneur, with people dispensing advice. I don’t usually for a number of reasons – a lot of people do dispense SEO advice who are far more knowledgeable about the subject. If I can provide a unique spin, or if I have an opinion on some stories assoicated with it, then yes I’d probably give an opinion. Now though, it’s something for other people to talk about.
However, more and more people are having their fingers burnt by snake oil SEO’ers, something I don’t particularly want to see happen. However they are easy to spot once you know what you are looking for. Here’s 3 things to look for.
1. They decide on quality
View any thread on Sitepoint on Digital Pointless entitled “Why can’t I get into DMOZ? I have a quality site and I’ve submitted it numbers of time*, yet it still not in?”. To coin a phrase – quality is in the eye of the beholder, and often these sites are thinly veiled affiliate sites. It’s sad, because they get all defensive with their site, when in actual fact we’re trying to help them.
They can hurt your site by completely rewriting it and getting it linked to a number of bad neighbourhoods. If anybody says that they’ve rewritten your site and it’s a “much better quality site*” because they have “High Keyword Density” (something I’ll debunk in a later post), restore your old site, then run.
2. They don’t listen to you.
SEO should be a two way street. The most successes I’ve had in the SEO field has been both on my stuff, and stuff I’ve done for other people where they have had a lot of input into the campaign. I’m not saying they do the work for me, but they offer suggestions, talk about their wares & generally position themselves in the best way possible. It’s important to remember that if you’re embarking on an SEO campaign, they may know the keywords, but you know the customers. You should have the final say in everything they do on-site wise, and offer suggestions off-site wise.
3. They’re Submissive
Take your mind out of the gutter, when I mean that they’re submissive, I mean that they do nothing to build links except submit them to the gazillion directories on Digital Point. Woe betide any of them doing work to actually get links (and by get links, I mean promotion, networking – both offline and online, and building up a set of resources to share), they’d rather submit to endless directories.
They believe the best links are submitted, and will try and tell you this. Most SEO’s do do some form of directory submission (usually to local, regional or niched directories), but if this is the crux of their SEO policy, again, run away now.
Anyway, these are three things I’ve noticed bad SEO’ers do. What have you noticed?
* Their spelling is atrocious too
Tags: digital point, dmoz, SEO, sitepoint | Comments: 3 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
My favorite ones are those who title themselves SEO Gurus. They put it in their forum signature and then shamelessly hit the boards with the most basic SEO questions ever. Makes you wonder.
It’s sad but true – potential clients know just about zero about SEO, what’s good and what’s bad. I am not an SEO consultant, but friends and family sometimes ask me to review offers made to them by SEO companies. I’m always shocked by how they offer so many stuff that is pretty much irrelevant. Seems to me like they’re trying to blow up their work volume so they can charge more money.
Please tell me the last line was ironic?? ‘They’re’ should be Their
@Carly – Fixed!
@Anne – Funny you mention the SEO gurus, it’ll be in a post next week a rant about them!