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Went Hot: August 27, 2007 - 7:53 am
Posted By: Lyndon 678 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.searchengineguide.com)
Category: SEO
From the article "Most of the time these sorts of discussions seem to degenerate into a two-way argument. Sometimes its about black hat versus white hat. Sometimes it's about low-quality providers, or spammy marketers, or scammy “guaranteed rankings” offers. In any case, the participants often boil it down to a simple case of right and wrong, good-versus-evil. But quite a lot of the people I talk to are left with a nagging feeling this “either-or” way of looking at things doesn't address the core of the issue somehow."
2 Comments
Comments
We can all improve the image of SEO by guiding people in selecting an agency or independent consultant. Have the courage to publicly recommend others in your own and related fields.
Only someone who either knows the skill in question themselves or has a network of others whose opinions they can trust is really qualified to evaluate the work of someone else in their field.
It is fairly easy for even the mediocre to get glowing testimonials from clients who believe what the agency tells them and don't know how to measure results themselves - or who write the review after they get all that traffic from that porn link farm and before they get them banned.
It is unwise to spend money for any marketing strategy, including SEO, without checking with others in the Industry first who will know or can find out how competent the company is and whether the strategy proposed is likely to work (or cause serious issues).
I also make sure everyone I speak with understands that those who have excellent skills are far too busy to be cold calling and sending unsolicited emails. Unless there is a specific reason (mutual contact or specific niche), you can fairly safely assume that anyone contacting you out of the blue is not the best choice.
Something any SEO usually does but most seeking SEO services may not think to do is check the organic listings for the SEO and their clients. If they've disappeared that is one big clue!
I'm not making this up - it actually happens. Remember Traffic-Power? Google publicly admitted they and their clients had been banned and the threads in the forums were flooded with complaints. There were so many posts about them at SearchEngineForums we had to split the thread.
And what do businesses like them do when they get a reputation (and dozens of unresolved complaints at the BBB)? They change their name and keep on victimizing.
It is up to us to educate the public and help them find reputable search marketers.
Excellent article by Diane "Torka" Aull. This helps sum up a lot of what is also being discussed in the SEM/SEO Ethics thread here on Sphinn: http://sphinn.com/story/4175