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How to Work With SEO Consulting Companies

July 12th, 2007 by Joshua Dorkin | Filed under Commentary, SEO.

While on vacation, I met a great guy — a friend of a friend — who had a website developed for his company. When he found out that I worked in the internet business, he began to ask me a few questions about how things work, SEO, and then some. In building his website, he hired a design firm that did a great job. He was not satisfied with simply having a website and found a company that could do SEO (Search engine optimization) work for him to help his site rank for certain keywords.

They had been working for many months together. The SEO company kept billing him and he kept paying. Unfortunately, since he had no idea what an SEO consultant actually did, he could not verify that they were doing a good or effective job. He asked me if getting a handful of leads over a few months was good, and I responded that it was not. This led me to become curious and visit his site.

I was shocked!

The company did not do even the most basic of SEO work for him. His code was not optimized, whatsoever.

This happens every day to countless people around the world. People calling themselves SEO experts charge people an arm & a leg to get their site ranked in the search engines. Many of these companies have no idea what they are doing.

How Can You Avoid an Unscrupulous SEO Company?

I recommend making sure you use a company that you have been referred to. Make sure they can provide references. Find out what keywords those references wanted to rank for and see if they rank for them. Contact the owners of those sites and ask them questions. A very quick hint if a SEO company is worth their salt is to see what keywords they rank for. Ask them. If they can’t get their own sites to do well in the search engines, do you think they will be able to help you?

Be sure that there are a set of expectations established before signing any contract. You must have in writing EXACTLY what you expect this company to do. They should be willing to provide details on how they intend on working with you and helping you out. If they do not, STAY AWAY! If they won’t answer your questions, STAY AWAY.

Basically, be extremely careful when working with any SEO company. There are many legit ones out there, but if you don’t do your part and investigate the companies you work with, you can find yourself paying out the a** to a company that is doing nothing for you.

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  • Excellent... very nice post. Thanks
  • Completely agree. Interesting article, there are some shady people out there
  • If you are going to work with SEO company so First You must have to ask portfolio of Previous work and their's current rankings in search enggines.

    right SEO Partner can Deliever you very good bunch of rankings or you could loss all the rankings from search engines, than what ?

    choose experts or do your self, that will be better in marketing.

    and content is king for your business site so write content your self and Don't trust on other peoples for content.


    this article will Help to many users.

    Jay Paul
  • Many SEO Companies take advantage of their less than savvy clients, promising top 10 rankings for all search engines. But most don't promise those results for highly competitive keywords. IMO, hiring an experienced in-house SEO expert is definitely the way to go.
  • This post is increasingly relevant in today's scenario where a large number of unscrupulous SEO's roam around on the internet claiming to make you into the top 10 in all search engines.
  • It is important to educate yourself on SEO a bit before hiring a company to do it for you. SEO is ever changing and not an exact science.

    I can give you another perspective on SEO. I do SEO professionaly. I run a couple of my own sites but mostly opt. others sites.

    I think most people think that they can open a website and put a term in a keyword tag and then go to google and rank in the top 10. The hard truth is that there is a great deal of wok and time required to get top results.

    The most important and overlooked rule is to build a site that your visitor will find interesting and valuable. Sites that go viral because they have quality content require much less work.

    Content truly is king.........
  • I recommend learning SEO for yourself, so that it will save you thousands of dollars, and you know exactly what is going on in terms of site promotion.
  • Agreed. I believe it depends on who you learn SEO techniques from, whether they have done trial and error and learned the tricks themselves or if they've just read all about what people talk about (which isn't necessarily all truth). Fortunately, I learned from a great SEO team who have known the ropes for quite a while.
  • Haha,
    I totally agree - this happens ALL the time and you can't do much about it. PPL have no freaking idea what the SEO is. I used to work for a big company in the SEO department and all the other departments were wondering all the time what the hack we were doing there :)
    Anywho, my advise is - dont pay when you dont know what you are paying for
  • Its a shame that it happens but i think a LOT of seo companies still do this kind of thing. had a couple of clients (i do seo work, too) who have claimed that another company had done some seo, and the most i saw was some "optimised" meta tags (which are quite useless (description only really any good for drawing users in once its actually ranking in google/yahoo/msn etc)). there needs to be some kind of official seo body or something to help regulate it (although, on the internet, it would be very hard to do)
  • That's what happens to most of the people, the problem lies not at the SEO company's end but the person consulting them as well. While hiring either an SEO or any other service provider, keeping a check on him is a must!
  • SEO has a reputation for being such a 'black art' - many SEO companies claim to get you to the top, but in reality, this excludes many of the top search engines.

    IMHO as long as the code is well written, and the content is sufficiently relevant, companies who claim they can improve your ranking by changing META tags need to wake up and smell the backlinks :)
  • I was never in doubt about this. Now, I know they are only taking people's money and go to the local pub with them. It does not take an expert to realize they are lazy.
  • there are many client who doesn't know much about how SEO will increase their client search traffic. client will ask " How long SEO need to achieve my search traffic". those irresponsible SEO will give some lame excuses to client such as "too much competitors who posting the similar keywords on Internet"
    well, based on Quad City SEO's comment, I suggest client should find out more about What SEO do in order to communicate with SEO company easily.
  • Really useful site. Great information. Thanks for sharing.
  • References, References, References....are the key, but there is a trick to it. You can't completely rely on the references they give you.

    You can do a little research to find their clients or former clients with some backlink research or a Google search. After you find their site, shoot them a simple email to ask them a couple of questions about their results.

    Just remember...

    - Some firms do more than SEO. They could be a regular design client. Make sure you ask.

    - Dissatisfaction may stem from impatience. Competitive terms can sometimes take a while to rise to the top.

    Do you research!! Not all firms are created equal!!
  • Great Post-

    I am in the SEO industry and know all-to-well of the snakeoil salesman you speak of.

    I think what you say about checking to see what terms the companies website ranks for is great.... they are going to give their own website their best shot.

    Honestly, the SERPS are the resume for the seo firm... no need to look much further.

    -Brad
  • Good post. I come across these type of websites often, SEO companies charging $$$ per month for adding a few meta tags and running a keyword ranking report. These companies have definitely given the SEO industry a bad reputation. The only thing worse than a clueless SEO is a fast talking, clueless SEO company that can actually convince a client into paying for his services. My clients often show me the contracts they signed with previous SEO companies. A common theme and deceptive practice of SEO companies is to "guarantee" top 20 rankings for 10 keywords in 14 search engines. I had one client who paid 5k to an SEO and received this guarantee. 5 of the keywords were in their domain and the other 5 received a combined monthly search total of 120 visits, to top it off that go ranked #15+ for these keywords in MSN and other lower quality search engines. As a result of their 5k, they recieved about 180 visitors and $40 in sales so definitely don't fall for the guaranteed trap. You need to know exactly what you are being guaranteed before signing up or you'll get stuck with top 20 rankings for rarely searched terms. Definitely follow Joshua's advice and ask the company what terms they rank for their own company as well as their process. All ethical SEO's are very upfront with their process.
  • I work with an SEO firm and, in the process, have seen some real crack jobs out there. A great tool that we've found is a product called WebCEO - it tracks keyword rankings and will make custom reports for our clients. So we send them a login/pw and a client to download and they can track how their sites are doing on the terms they're looking for. This gives a sense of accountability on our part and peace of mind that we actually are working to help their sites' performance on the Search Engines.

    I think any good, legit SEO firm should provide something similar to keep them honest.
  • I think an easy way to figure out whether an SEO company is authenticate is to ask for a list of their clients.

    Have a look at them and you should be able to figure out.
  • This is a problem not only in SEO companies but in any company you require its services. Having the review of other people is very important before taking a decision. Imagine for example, you need to contact a plumbing company to repair your house. How can you be sure that they are going to do a right job?
  • This happen to most of the industry all of the time.

    But I"m really surprise you friends don't even have some idea about this. Don't he ever search for his website? Anyway, If the site have traffic, for sure it's will get some email and call.
  • I've been learning about SEO for several years now, and have done consulting work part time for the last 18 months.

    I'm now starting up my own full time SEO business but I'd like to add a few notes to this.

    Firstly, there are several clients out there that don't realise that ranking in the SERPS can be a long arduous project. Sure I understand that clients want to see results, but sometimes expectations can be too high.

    I had a potential client want to rank #1 in Google for the keyword "Business" within a period of two months. That is what he wanted, when I informed him that something like that would take much longer than two months, would take a considerable investment (of both time and money) given how broad the term was he thought I was trying to shaft him.

    I think the problem, is that unscrupulous companies out there promise the world, deliver very little then refer to their terms of service as an escape route - which makes it harder for guys like us.

    I also think that there is so much information out there (for free, I know I'll be adding more and more to my site when it finally goes live) that potential clients should do a little research on some of the methodologies that their SEO's will be using.

    This should help alleviate some of the problem
  • I am personally just delving into the world of SEO and realize now how ignorant I was before. There is SO much to learn and take into account that it can feel overwhelming. I have heard the term SEO thrown around so much I figured it couldn't be THAT hard. Well maybe not if you live, eat, sleep and breath SEO and those people are few and far between!!
  • its amazing how important seo really is and for a company to really mae it i can almost guarantee an seo consultant is a good move, i mean you really dont notice how big seo is until it goes bad and your google traffic goes to 0
  • "Contact the owners of those sites and ask them questions."

    Otherwise you will met a people who claim himself an seo expert. In fact, he just know the word 'seo'.
  • Every SEO company should provide detailed, monthly or quarterly analytics and some sort of a bill sheet to show what was done and the results of these actions.
  • "Basically, be extremely careful when working with any SEO company."
    Yep, I can confirm that.. I know a lot of people who got ripped off basically..
  • Good post. It really makes me cringe some of the SEO companies out there. I have been working with an insurance company which has two websites. I do the SEO for one and they have hired an SEO agency to do the other.

    Anywoo, the SEO agency lost them a whole bunch of rankings and they said they had no idea why it happened...

    Then they decided to tell him, "it was because he had two insurance sites" Google didn't like it so has deranked them.. The content on both sites was totally different - most websites are hosted on shared servers!

    They just wanted to do both sites, even though they were doing a terrible job on the first one!
  • Vic
    "I’ve found establishing a product and website was easy but have no idea how to get customers now?"

    This is what happens with most people.

    The Times had an article about a year ago stating that over 90% of people that start an online business are gone in a year.

    My advice to people who want to blog or do affiliates is to read read and then read some more.

    Doctors, Lawyers, Nurses, Accountants go to school to become professionals and to learn there craft. But yet people have this miss conception that Internet Marketers just get up one day and decided to make 10k a month and by magic by the end of the first month there already making money.

    I have just started a brand new site it has been online for 3 days I had 400 visitors yesterday.

    This was no magic I have slept maybe 3 hours a day since i got this siteup I guarantee that i will have this site ranked in one month but this will only happen i fi do the work.

    Ian if you would like go to my site and contact me I would like to help you and do not worry i am not looking to sale you anything but many years ago I was you and i wished some one had pointed me the way.
  • In response to #1, people have whole businesses setup around selling products just from search traffic. There are million dollar keywords out there, literally. While it is not good to rely just on search traffic, it could disappear one day, it can be a huge benefit to a company (a large or small one) .
  • In answer to Ian's question, 54% of the hits to my Web site come from Google alone. That says something about traffic from search engines.

    And no, I don't make any conscious effort to improve my search engine rankings. I just try to write original articles of interest to my readers.
  • This SEO company was obviously a little shady but in some fields, getting a few leads over a few months may not be a bad things like real estate agents and some other. These are some great tips to find a legitimate SEO company. Good job.
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