SEO Consultants Exposed

As a new owner, I couldn’t be “happier” to share this “amazing” opportunity with all of you. Blogging allows me to express myself over news, events, and situations that would take a rather long conversation to achieve in person. Personal conversations are great and may provide more value than reading a blog, but it’s not in every day conversation I can talk about reasons I do not like pigeons. Blogging can be time to self-reflect on one’s thoughts and have others provide insight, it is also a tool to promote specific information and add value to your name and possessions. What or who is referenced, consistency in ethics, and inspiration are what determines personable credibility in blog posts.
Let me tell you about the offer I received from a “Professional Blog Writing Service”. I spoke to a representative and was offered a blog post with quality writing, he’ll do the research, he will source all materials and ensure he doesn’t copyright. He will do all of these amazing things for you for only $55 to $135. Can you imagine? He will bake your cake and eat it too. Just provide him with a strategic direction and he will help you with content ideas, manage his writers, provide a “professional content editor” and take care of the posts for you!
I inquired further, wondering what determines the $80 difference in the minimum and maximum rate. The answer is in the editorial process, and this is the editorial process in exact words:
Client Interview to discuss Blog topics
30 minutes at a time
Interview is recorded
Blog Manager gives recording to writers
Writers research, source, and write blog posts
Blog posts are posted to Google Docs for review
Client can edit, add, or delete
Client must approve by specified date for on-time guarantee
Once approve, Blog Manager schedules posts in Blog.
It was also explained to me that some corporate accounts have a more complex review process, thus requires more “management” in generating a post. I think this guy needs to manage his e-mails up to par before working on anyone’s blog. He lacks grammar and professionalism, but don’t worry, he guarantees all writers employed have their Bachelors Degree in English if not more. I did some research on the representative’s blog; it had a Page Rank of 2, and an Alexa of 1 million. With scores like those, I have no idea how this company can claim their services are “the most effective marketing online.” Watch out bloggers, the aliens are back and they’re hungry.
Posted by : admin
When the emperor has no clothes, you can just make stuff up. SEO is still a haven for unemployed corporate bureaucrats, peddling their wares to the unsuspecting– like a fat person trying to tell you how to lose weight. Let’s look at one recent example– we are not making this up!
Exposing these self proclaimed “internet marketing experts” is easy– while they waste their time writing senseless reports about how they will drive traffic, you can simply drive traffic. Utilize social networks such as FaceBook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to reach out to millions of users at little expense. Create public profiles, and engage the community. Respond to users comments and suggestions to ensure they keep participating in the conversation. Write blog posts to promote your product– which will increase brand awareness and inbound linking. Not only are these methods of little cost, they are measurable. People fall into two categories: they either talk about doing things, or they roll up their sleeves and actually do something proactive.
One of my clients recently hired a self-proclaimed “strategic marketing expert” (not sure what that quite means) with good intentions– to help market and drive traffic to the new site. What did this expert have to offer that my agency didn’t? I decided to take a look at her website to find out.
The site is PR0, with no inbound links and absolutely no unique content. But she did graciously put up a link to our client’s new website, which is a sure way to get some serious link juice.
Her mission statement says “We create innovative marketing campaigns, products and promotions from idea to implementation so that worthwhile companies can reach more people, make more money and do more that matters.“ To me, this says “I don’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll use buzz words to impress people. And when I say “implementation,” that means I’ll create lists and Google documents to prove my importance. And every time I use a buzz word, please ring a bell so I can feel satisfied with myself.”
She’s such an SEO expert that she somehow forgot to add meta descriptions to her website. I guess she was so busy providing valuable strategies to her clients that she simply forgot. Or didn’t know how to. After all, it’s really difficult to add proper meta data with CoffeeCup HTML Editor.
She doesn’t have any client references or testimonials on her site. Probably because she’s very humble and doesn’t like to brag about herself.
She’s got one page indexed on Google. My personal blog has almost 400 pages indexed on Google, and has a PR2 after only a couple of months. Again, she’s probably too busy providing “strategic marketing plans” for her clients, leaving her little time to tend to her website.
Her website has no analytics tied in, so I would assume she has never used Google Analytics. But I’m sure she has some secret proprietary method of determining traffic sources.
Now let’s take a look at her blog. Oh, wait– she doesn’t have a blog. That’s ok, because blogs aren’t important to us marketing folks.
And to top it all off, she inserted herself above our agency as “CEO of Marketing” on this client’s project. It wasn’t long before we exposed her– we drew up our own plan to drive traffic. We boiled it down to actionable tasks that will show results, something she wasn’t capable of. Now she can focus her time where it is best suited– writing internal documentation with one hand, while stroking her ego with the other.
Posted by : admin
I was contacted the other night on Facebook by a supposed ‘SEO Expert’ looking for work. After a moment of talking with this individual (who will remain anonymous), they immediately began to set off alarms. I asked for a sample of their work, and after a long spiel about everything they’ve done, finally delivered a hastily prepared slide show that only had one example website. I checked everything out from my end, and what they had as results did not match up. They were shooting for a very specific term, and only showed themselves as third rank in their example, which honestly made me very wary of them. After I checked it out myself, I was appalled. Not only did they not show up in the top rank, they were completely off the radar. I shook my head and asked them if they had any other examples, and they began spitting out a whirlwind of references that looked like it was just shameless self-promotion from friends. I was shocked to think this person believed I was buying it.
At this point, they were literally begging for a job, proclaiming they had ‘fresh, new ideas that no one had ever thought about’. I was fed up with it, and referred them to someone who knew what they were talking about when it comes to SEO (Which i admit, I did it to test their mettle). I heard later that the supposed ‘expert’ argued up and down about everything that has to do with optimizing a webpage, but was quickly cut off. Angrily, they blamed me for promising them a lead, I told them to build their portfolio, and immediately ceased contact.
Let’s be frank. Imagine this happened in real life, at your doorstep. A mysterious person comes to your doorstep, proclaiming that they are the master. They proceed to argue everything you have to say, and with nothing to back them up. In a sane world, this would promptly get a door slammed in someone’s face. Experience speaks louder than words, and anyone who was as much of an expert as this person claimed to be could easily show their work. You wouldn’t commission an artist until you’ve seen an example of their work, so you shouldn’t have to deal with people like this just because they say they’re great.
As a parting word, I would like to encourage everyone to do their homework. I’ve said it above, and i’ll say it again: If these self-proclaimed experts of the field are such experts, their portfolios would speak volumes.
Posted by : admin
Last week, I was approached by a snake oil SEO vendor, who shall remain unnamed. For the low, low price of $49 a month, you can dominate the search engines and directories. And then there’s a premium tier at $100 a month and a top tier at $200 a month. At the top tier, you get featured placement in their directory that gets no traffic. They themselves get no traffic to their site and have no search engine rankings.
The best part is that you can join them as a reseller of these services, for which you get compensated an undisclosed amount per lead. And as you add people in your downline, who are below you in the pyramid scheme, you get a share of their earnings. And you’re not just a multi-level marketer– oh no– you’re an owner in the company with stock options. It says so right there in your back-end– “stock option qualified”. Now is your time to seize your share of the internet marketing riches.
Like most “get rich quick” schemes that play on user ignorance, the 5 minute infomercial they show talks all about how great it is to make a lot of money, but doesn’t actually say what they do or what you do. If you’re not really helping businesses get more local leads, then whatever money you take from them is just a scam. Ping me if you want to know who the company is.
Posted by : admin
What is your SEO consultant selling?
A colleague contacted me the other day, ranting about a lady that was pushing SEO and how she was a total scam. Her presentation was focused on DAO– something she made up. From her slides, DAO is the next step– the successor to SEO. But if your own site sucks from a SEO standpoint, then you need to start selling TFT– Totally Fabricated Technology. Because if you’re not technical, then you definitely want to sound like you are by using a lot of TLA’s (Three Letter Acronyms). Hey, make up your own acroynm and then proclaim that you are the world’s foremost expert. What? You haven’t heard of LRF? A colleague of mine in a meeting with a large client, with a perfectly straight face, actually asked if they supported LRF. The folks around the table looked at each and nodded seriously at each other– “Why, yes, of course– we do support LRF!” We purposely chose LRF because when you search on it, there is nothing there but Little Rubber Feet. Oh, and DAO is Data Access Object or Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, according to organic search results on the first page of Google.
The problem with SEO witch doctors is that they only have to know more about SEO than their client to appear intelligent.