Anyone who has been watching the new BBC series ‘Sherlock’, from Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, will know that everything’s all too easy for Sherlock Holmes. He comes in, glances around a room and swiftly deduces everything from the solution for the crime to the embarrassing experiences the butler had in his youth. He then swans out again; smugly confident in the effect he’s had.
At least he’s a terrible violin player.
Some SEO companies are the same. They swan in to a site, declare that five different elements are what are holding it back, offer to fix the problems for a set fee, take the fee, mangle the site, and flee.
Their violin skills are obviously beyond the scope of this simple article.
It’s not difficult to deduce the difficulties of a low-ranking site from a swift examination, but some SEO firms do just that when trying to lure in new clients. The problem with these client-mongering tactics of the SEO industry is that the fly-in, fly-out attitude to search engine optimisation can do real harm to a site. Even when the SEO firm has done some good work, the bigger problems remain. The site owner may be left with a solution to the problems identified, but they haven’t received the kind of in-depth SEO work that the site needs to keep it at the top of the listings for a long time.
If you’re approached by an SEO company and have never performed any optimisation on your site before, then the problems they identify are really no surprise, Sherlock. Be cautious, and do your own homework before hiring.
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