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Is This SEO Firm For Real?
I had an interesting conversation with a potential client the other day. They were looking for some help with search engine optimization or SEO as we like to call it.
SEO is the component of search engine marketing that aims to get your website pages highly ranked (on the first page of results preferably, at the top of the list even more preferably) in the natural search results…not the sponsored results where you buy your spot. A company purporting to help you rise in the natural search results of the major search engines is often referred to as an SEO firm, or just an SEO. Sponsored search is called pay-per-click marketing, and a very different discipline, which I can address in a later posting.
Anyway, this potential client I was chatting with was interested in knowing about us and what we can do for them, but midway through the conversation he stopped me and sort of broke the ice by asking me (and I’m paraphrasing here) “how do I know if some of the SEO companies I’m interviewing are for real? They all guarantee different things. They all say they can deliver the world for a large monthly retainer. How can I tell who is legitimate and who is trying to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge?”
This excellent question changed the tone of the conversation a great deal because I went from being a guy trying to sell my services, to someone trying to counsel a fellow business person through a scary territory in which I have a good bit of exposure, which is generally how I would rather approach things. Then today I happened across this excellent posting by SEO guru Jill Whalen on ISEdb.com that basically answers this same question in the same way I answered it for my potential client. I highly recommend reading Jill’s posting before starting out on an evaluation of SEO firms.
If after reading my rambling you don’t have time to read Jill’s posting, they just know this one thing: the absolute favorite scammy SEO sales pitch, one that a cold-calling SEO sales person actually tried to tell me once, is that their firm can guarantee you top placement (or any placement) in Google’s (or any other large search engine’s) natural rankings. This is an absolute lie. If you read Google’s advice for choosing an SEO firm you will see this spelled out plainly!
Bottom line - be careful and do your homework. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!
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UPDATE: here’s another article with great advice on this same topic
