SEO Consultant Fakery: Part II
A month ago, I exposed a SEO consultant that fleeced ignorant clients. The other day, another internet marketing company, called us to promote their services. Somehow, I was a lead in their system, and they mentioned a site I hadn’t touched in several years.
So I posed as a client– asking them about what their services are, how it works, and so forth.
The conversation went something like this (names redacted to protect the guilty):
Tim (consultant): We have a direct relationship with Google and will get you traffic on Google via SEO and PPC.
Me: How do you do that? And what is SEO?
Tim: Well, we have a direct relationship with Google. We create articles and get them certified by Google.
Me: Certified articles? Do you pay for that and how does work?
Tim: When Google comes to your site, they see that we are optimizing it and that we are certified. We have to pay Google for that.
Me: So forgive my ignorance, since I’m not that technical– is that like AdWords? I didn’t know you could pay for natural results.
Tim: Let’s do a search on “web design”– those spots on the right are PPC, while the natural search results are on the left. Google sees what pages are ours and gives us priority.
Me: Really– so that wikipedia result in the first natural spot– how much are they paying to get certified?
Tim: Wikipedia doesn’t have to pay.
Me: Really? How do I know what is certified or not– can you show me examples? Can I pay Google more to have our articles certified faster?
Tim: Well we have a lot of clients, so what we’d do for you may be different. We’re not able to pay for expedited certification.
Me: Isn’t your practice of buying links considered “black hat”? I don’t want to get banned or anything.
Tim: We are completely ethical. Only experts in SEO are allowed to work at {SEO_company} and all are certified.
Me: Whew– because I’ve heard some horror stories from SEO companies that flat out lie to clients. And who am I to know what’s true or not?
Tim: Happy to educate you on these issues– I know they’re complicated, but you’re learning quickly.
Me: Great– please send me a proposal covering what you guys can do for us.
After the call, the “SEO expert” sent me a couple canned proposals– both reflecting ZERO thought or customization, except for a find/replace on prospect name. This guy spend ZERO effort on tailoring the documents to the site I mentioned. There are a lot of good search engine optimization companies out there, and it’s charlatans like these that give the rest of us a bad name. How can we help clients see the real, earnest folks from the total fakers? The company that called me (name withheld) is a major agency, by the way.
Harrison
Well, I was wondering why there were no comments on my blog posts over the last couple weeks. Turns out there were some bugs in my wordpress theme. Fortunately, it’s all fixed now– sorry to all those who tried to post here.
In other news, I’ve been on the road a lot– will update you with cool things I’ve learned. And if you have topics you’d like me to blog about, just mention them here and I’ll do my best!
H
Comment by admin — October 20, 2008 @ 8:59 am
Hi Harrison,
Great site. Love your wit and humor. Keep up the great work. I look forward to reading more of your articles.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Comment by Jeremy Day — October 27, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
enjoyed the post amazing how many experts are out there…keep the posts coming. Will forward your post to our SEO manager he will get a laugh from the post..
cheers james of littlenomads.com
Comment by James — October 31, 2008 @ 1:31 am
James,
Thanks for the positive feedback. Would you like a free public SEO critique of your site– littlenomads.com?
H
Comment by admin — November 1, 2008 @ 12:03 am
That is absolutely absurd… There are some real bullshitters around it would seem. Will never get a good reputation though.
Comment by Anthony Shapley — November 3, 2008 @ 2:46 am
I saw at PubCon, they looked kind of dumpy, sitting in the corner with an old 2000’s laptop plastered with their company logo, which appeared to be printed from CafePress. This occurrence still amuses me to this day.
Comment by Max D. — November 22, 2008 @ 2:30 pm
Great post – very funny. I’ve seen this type of “seo consultant” too many times in the past 2 years and their numbers seem to be increasing. I also am not sold on having random people write articles for companies. Obviously blogging, articles, a website of relevant content is the first step - I just don’t think you can have an outsiders write them without risking loosing the essence of a company.
Comment by MJT — December 11, 2008 @ 8:33 am
This is outrageous and not in a funny way! It really makes me mad to that companies like this are able to exist and are profitable. I’ve seen this for some time when I get similar calls and they offer to “submit me to thousands of search engines and guarantee I’ll be the first!”
The worst part is that most small business out there will believe anything they hear just because the company has a fancy site or smooth talking sales person.
Comment by Search Marketing Whisperer — May 25, 2009 @ 1:05 pm