World Way Your Trusted Marketing Avoiding shady SEO providers
Company you hired might not be legit Got a sneaking suspicion the SEO shares his list of red flags to look out for Columnist Greg Gifford.
Image of me jumping on a soapbox Maybe I should have used an because I’m about to preach.
I’ve had my mind blown several times already not from amazing presentations Spring conference season is in full swing, with business owners and newbie’s in the marketing world and but from conversations.
Case in point I pointed out that the customers would still be out there, even if his dealership wasn’t and he agreed! He said he thought that sounded weird At an automotive conference He said they told him it wasn’t good for him to have an open forum where customers could say whatever they wanted about his business. , I talked to a dealer who had deleted his dealership’s advice of his SEO he shrugged and figured his SEO guy knew what he was doing. I’ve talked to far too many business owners this spring who feel like they’re getting fleeced by their SEO providers
I’m also taking a step back and looking at the SEO industry without any preconceived notions and they’re happening far too often. I thought I’d take a look at some red flags and warning signs with this week’s article here. While I’m stepping up on my soap box to preach,
I’ve talked to far too many marketers who have just started off in the field who don’t know how to judge the value of the work their employer provides. Those conversations are scary,
This post isn’t meant for This post is for the business owners and the knobs in the industry Yes, most of us are legitimate SEO and marketers who know what we’re doing and do everything we can to help our clients. Following are 10 red flags which signal that you may be dealing with a shady SEO provider
Duplicated content Low quality
There was a version for every car in their lineup. In total, we’re talking 15 or 16 posts was packed with “Honda Civic AC Repair in all exactly the same. The only thing different was the model of the car. And it gets better! They had taken those 15 posts and used them all again, for around 20 different I talked to a dealership that suspected their content was just phoned in by their provider all exactly the same, just with a few keywords substituted in each one.
Obviously, If you're like this dealer and see more than 340000 exact matches, you know you’re in bad shape. This was bad news. If you suspect you’re getting cruddy recycled content, copy a sentence from a post and search for it in Google inside of double quotes so you only see exact matches.
Outdated tactics lazy
The requested title tag was nearly 30 words long, and they had at least 35 cities listed in the META KEYWORDS. I had a fun conversation at SMX West with a few attorneys.
They had also requested that all but the first sentence of the home page be hidden behind a “read more” link. One of them was telling me that their new SEO provider sent their website guy a list of requests
Then you’ve got access to a wealth of information about SEO best practices. If you’re reading Search Engine Land If something seems shady or outdated, some simple checks online with trusted sources can help you confirm or deny your suspicions.
Posts all you get
That’s obviously bad news bears for your business. If your provider’s entire SEO strategy is simply providing posts, clearly, are an important element, but they’re just one piece of a much larger pie.
There’s so much more to making your website a relevant resource than sharing a bunch of posts.
Lowered bounce rate artificially
End metric Far too many business owners obsess over their bounce rate when there are your bounce rate can be a good engagement signal, but it shouldn’t be your be all Much more legitimate metrics for SEO success. Sure
He told them that if their call to action was a phone call, At the last SMX West before he went on hiatus, If they were driving users to make a call, then a high bounce rate could mean that users were converting and then leaving. When someone asked about their bounce rate they wanted a high bounce rate. Matt Cuts said something in an open Q&A that’s stuck with me ever since.
Many times, they’re simply adding a script that pings Google Analytics every four or five seconds that a user is on a page. If your SEO provider promises a drastically lower bounce rate because customer behavior has changed. you should ask them what they’re doing. , BOOM! The bounce rate is magically lowered but not because the content is engaging or
SEO services
If you’re hiring an SEO provider, you’re doing so because you believe that their expertise will help your business get more visibility online. If they show you a menu of possible services, with everything broken out into individual elements, that’s not a good sign. It’s perfectly okay if they have several different packages, but if you’re expected to choose individual components to create your own package, that’s not a good business decision You’re hiring them because they’re the expert what your business needs to gain more visibility in searches they shouldn’t expect that you know exactly
Ranking Guaranteed
If your provider is doing it, run away and you’ve read this about 258 times before. But hey, nobody can guarantee rankings. I’m not going to dwell on this one, because it’s
SEO Cheap
SEO takes manual work, SEO can’t be automated it takes people sitting there, doing the work. . If you’re paying less than a month for SEO, that’s another bad sign. That’s not cheap. And it takes time
For SEO Setup fees
Since there’s more research on the front end of an SEO project, providers try to saddle new clients with a setup fee. And what’s included. Setup fees are rare but sometimes, a setup fee and your first month’s service fee, they’re not doing any extra work that first month, compared to what they do the following months.
It’s likely that they’re just asking for extra money because they can. If they’re charging If your provider is charging a “setup fee, ask them why,
Google Analytics No access to
You need to run away as fast as you can. There’s zero reason why your provider should deny you access. Yes, If your provider sets up Google Analytics for your site but refuses to give you access this sounds crazy to most of us, but it happens all the time. to the analytics for your own website
On the flip side of the coin without access to your analytics, they have no idea what’s going on with your website so how can they be optimizing for better traffic you should run just as fast. , if you start working with a new provider that doesn’t ask for access to your Google Analytics,
Reporting No monthly
Your provider should absolutely be providing a monthly SEO report. I talked to several providers at recent automotive conferences that were using a large, well-known provider who only produced quarterly reports. Since that was the only provider they’ve ever used, they didn’t know any better.
 |
| Add caption |
0 comments: