With so much information on SEO now available on the net, it’s fascinating to see how many truly sleazy SEO sales pitches are still being attempted. It’s also astounding to see what new angles they can come up with – even recently recrafting the old ‘we can get you ranked number one’ promise around Google’s recent Farmer update.
These SEO sales people are no more and no less than the snake oil sellers of old.
Remember snake-oil sellers? Those charming travelling salesmen who dealt in dreams? Snake oil sellers were primarily a US phenomenon, but every country has experienced the salesman selling the miracle cure out the back of a van from Loch Lamond to Liverpool. There are a large number of them now dealing in SEO.
These sleazy sales people are as easy to spot on the web as they are in real life. The recent Farmer update prompted one intrepid snake-charmer to advertise that his new method could use Farmer to increase profits. The smart site owner’s alarms should have been going off when the ‘expert’ said his clients could ‘extract autopilot cash’ from their sites.
When site owners can easily check the validity of SEO sales claims, it is absolutely dumbfounding that any business could still fall for the old ‘get ranked quick’ schemes, but they do. Desperation and a need to believe lead thousands of site owners to commit to buying that miracle cure. It’s understandable, perhaps, but completely avoidable. Research potential search engine optimisation companies before signing on the dotted line. Don’t believe the hype.
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Somebody should be selling a product to detect whether or not your SEO consultant is a snake oil salesman or not. Sometimes it is tricky to identify the con artists, but once they are doing things online for a client it is fairly easy to see what they are doing.
Clients are often in the dark as to what their SEO guy or gal is doing for them. The truth is out there and they love it when you show behind the scenes.
But yes you make a good point, there is no quick way to rank for competitive (valuable) keywords that other have invested good time, and SEO money to get them to the top.
Another thing that clients need to be educated on.
Hi Carl, had an incident start of the year when an SEO company had approached a lady who is now our client, they baffled her with science then took £1,500 a year to list her on a free directory. People need to be so careful.