7 Signs You Should Run Screaming From An SEO Consultant

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7 Signs You Should Run Screaming From An SEO Consultant

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First off, a disclaimer. I'm not an SEO consultant and I don't play one on TV. But, because my startup, HubSpot is in the internet marketing software business, I've had to learn a fair amount about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I've found it to be a fascinating industry and have embedded a lot of what I discovered into our (currently free) website grader. Website Grade, among other things, is an SEO tool which makes some simple suggestions on improving the SEO of a website.

Many business executives I talk to are in the process of evaluating their internet marketing strategy, and the topic of SEO is often near the top of the list. Below are a few tell-tale signs that you're probably talking to someone on the wrong end of the cluefulness spectrum and as such, you should be looking for the nearest exit.

7 Simple Signs You Should Be Running Screaming From An SEO Consultant

1. References Unknown "Experts": Instead of citing known and trusted sources like Aaron Wall (from SEOBook.com) or Rand Fishkin (from SEOmoz), they make vague references to "experts" that have given them "proprietary" insights and strategies. In my mind, the SEO industry is a bit like the encryption industry. Those that are really good are the ones that talk openly and to put their ideas out on the web for public debate and discussion.

2. Suggests Specific Keyword Densities: He tells you that your content should be written with a primary focus on making sure you embed all the right keywords as frequently as possible. Run away faster if he tells you that the optimal keyword desnity is 14.2%. My guess is that the average engineer at Google is likely smarter than the average SEO consultant. As such, you're better off writing content that humans will enjoy and link to instead of writing content to try and lure the search engines into ranking you higher. Sure, you keywords should be in there, but try make it "natural" sounding.

3. Manic Directory Submissions: She offers to submit your website to a bunch of online directories. Run away faster if she suggests that he has a proprietary list of "high quality" directories that nobody else knows about. There were a ton of these "submit your website to 478 directories" tools that came out a while back. I'm going to argue that most of the directories that let just about anyone in are likely not worth much to you.

4. Overly Focused On Link Buying: Shortly after a $2,000 "assessment" project, his first step is to ask you to create a $5,000 monthly budget to buy links. Anybody can buy links. Many can even buy good links. But, there needs to be some effort to create high-quality inbound links that you're not paying for every month. SEO strategies, particularly in the B2B SEO sector, should be about leverage. It's going to be hard to find arbitrage opportunities (i.e. buying links for less than they're actually worth) by going to what are increasingly becoming "efficient" marketplaces.

5. Naive Use Of Social Sites: She offers to submit your site to the popular sites like digg, reddit and StumbleUpon. Run away faster if she suggests she's got an army of drones in Fictitioustan that will vote on your articles and get you on the front page of digg and drive a bunch of traffic. One reason is that you might just succeed in getting your site's URL banned. Another is that unless the article is interesting and useful, you're not going to get a lot of link-love anyways, so there's minimal SEO value.

6. Black Hat Practices: He suggests any form of black hat (or dark gray hat) techniques like putting hidden text on pages, redirecting users to a completely different site, offering different content to search engines vs. human users or anything that sounds like it's a misguided attempt to "trick" the search engines. Once again, see note #1: If I had to bet on a Google engineer vs. an SEO consultant, I'd bet on the Google engineer. Besides, it's not a fair fight.

7. Overly Complicated Explanations: They can't explain the rationale behind their strategy and approach in ways that a relatively intelligent person (i.e. you) can understand. Though search engine optimization can be nuanced, unless you're in a highly competitive sector, you don't need a PhD from MIT to understand some of the simple, but effective basic practices.

These are just some of the obvious signs that came to me at midnight. I have a ton more that are more subtle (and a big collection of "positive" signals too). If there's sufficient interest, I'l post a follow-up article with some of those.

Have you interviewed or hired an SEO consultant recently? If so, would love to hear your thoughts about the experience (both before and after). If you have any other tips along the lines of the above, would love to hear them. Please leave a comment.

Posted by Dharmesh Shah on Mon, May 14, 2007 @ 09:43 AM

COMMENTS

I'm a search marketing specialist and my biggest complaint is the design firm who fails to apply basic SEO principles to a website. I'm often in the position of having to turn away clients because my recommendation is a complete redesign! In this day and age, with all the free tools, forums and books on SEO, it seems unconscionable that someone would charge thousands of dollars for a website that's virtually invisible to the search engines.

posted on Monday, May 14, 2007 at 10:51 AM by Nicolette Beard

I agree with you all the way we should make a SEO Check Lists for people to use when shopping for a SEO Services Thanks LK

posted on Monday, May 14, 2007 at 11:45 AM by Lenny

Please write follow-up article! We're about to re-launch our site with a new brand name. We're also trying to boost our traffic with link love. We have a great deal of original content that will be building up over the next year. If companies take on SEO themselves....what's the checklist? Thanks again for another great article! EAD

posted on Monday, May 14, 2007 at 12:28 PM by Elizabeth Davison

Dharmesh - I usually run into another room quickly when non-SEO folks start writing about SEO, but this is good. :-)

Elizabeth -- there are lots of great SEO resources online for small businesses. Just do a little clicking/searching and you should find a wealth of information.

posted on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 2:41 AM by Matt McGee

ooh, oooh, is she in Northern California? I think I have seen some of her handiwork on reddit - weird submissions touting some weird product web sites - completely fish out of water topics for reddit, clearly no clue that the stuff would get either massively downvoted or completely ignored.

posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 2:20 PM by Ann E. Mouse

My favorite was the SEO outfit that sent me an offer to create content for my site. I replied back with the numerous spelling and grammar mistakes corrected. :-)

posted on Saturday, May 19, 2007 at 5:18 PM by Nicholas Hebb

Worse than SEO consultants are the SEO wannabes. They are thos who cause the biggest harms at companies. That guy who knows a bit of HTML code and thinks that SEO is all about imbounds links.

posted on Monday, May 21, 2007 at 3:02 AM by lUCIO

Actually, Matt is still running Elite-WebDesigns.com with no staff to support the services he is selling. He's also hiding assets under my company name, solutions-recovery and senior solutions... Both rehab centers being run out of his house on tenaya.

posted on Monday, July 02, 2007 at 4:15 PM by David Marlon

I never wrote the posted blog above.
We worked for Matt in Egypt and got screwed.
We are still holding over $27,000. in bad checks from Mr. Marlon. As far as hiding assets, He's probably having trouble hiding his ass right now from ALL the people he screwed that worked for him. In my case I don't wish to ever see or be near Mr. Marlon again.

posted on Monday, July 02, 2007 at 8:04 PM by jamie seybold

oops, <a href="http://podcasts.linktheplanet.com/traffic-power-elite-webdesigns/"> Traffic Power is Now Elite Web Designs </a>

posted on Friday, July 06, 2007 at 9:22 PM by mariann poling

Thank you David for the update. I will make sure he gets a visit at his house pretty soon.

posted on Monday, July 09, 2007 at 11:47 AM by jamie seybold

The message posted on July 9th again was not me. I never wish to see Matt again. At his house or other wise. Fuck him, Traffic-power,Elite webdesigns and Maryann and anyone else affilliated with him. And you too for posting shit with my name on it. If you have a problem with Matt then put your own name on the post asshole.

posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at 9:33 PM by jamie seybold

I will continue to post messages untill you figure who this is. Matt A Marlon

posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 6:39 PM by jamie

Well written article. You need a comprehensive organic strategy to opimize what you have and grow your site with more pages. Acquiring links should still be a big part of that but publishing fresh content daily should be paramount. I've never met an SEM company I liked.

posted on Thursday, November 01, 2007 at 10:49 AM by Evan

Hope there was an painful cavity check at the dentention center.

posted on Friday, January 04, 2008 at 12:24 AM by Not Coachable

Man, I wish I' read this entry about a month ago. I just had some dealings with one of the worst SEO companies you can imagine. It's the main reason that I'm investing a lot of time figuring out what works and why?

posted on Friday, January 18, 2008 at 2:56 AM by Jay Kerr

Great materials! Thanks to this page it was easer to exxpalin to my boss that the email he just received is a scum. My best! RS

posted on Thursday, February 07, 2008 at 3:04 AM by Rob Stafi

Give excellent tools and your friends will keep coming back.

posted on Friday, February 29, 2008 at 2:36 PM by Gray

It's really amazing how many claim to be expert at SEO! The bottom line is references and proof of performance... The tools and resources on hubspot.com are a valuable resource and I love sharing them with my clients ;)

posted on Thursday, April 03, 2008 at 9:33 AM by Joe Rinehart

Also, if I can make a late add. A good indicator that you should look elsewhere is if someone guarantees a result. Truthfully, if a SEO company is doing their job, you should be in the top ten results for some key phrase. I used to work for a "false seo" company, who claimed that they would give a money back guarantee that they would get people on page one of Google. There is really no way to know that they will succeed.