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44 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+23Want a SEO tip? Here's a thousand dollar tip: Write good content, less *****. Google is not stupid.
- jerfoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12search engine optimizer
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10What's an SEO?
- sicc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Dunno why you're getting dugg down, your statement is right on. I mean, there are some out there who offer their services and know what they are doing, but the vast majority know nothing.
- fakerjohn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6It's not just about the links. Folks gotta stop acting like they can sum up a profession in one sentence.
"Most pediatricians are crooks?"
"Most firemen are crooks?"
"I went to a stock broker and I'm not a millionaire! What a crook!"
You wanna know who the REAL crooks are?
Bookies, your pot dealer, Wal*Mart CEOs, that guy that sells fish tacos out of his van, carnival workers at the games booth (the guy who runs the Graviton's OK), middle managers with moustaches, divorce lawyers, ink cartridge designers, anybody who runs a commercial on AM radio, and anyone who offers you a discounted ticket to Mardi Gras. BUT LEAVE US SEOs ALONE! We're having a hard enough time fixing your crappy javascript dropdown menus, your NESTED tabular layouts, your pathetic attempts to spam forum posts, and let's not forget the way you cannot help yourself but to crosslink between sites on the same shared server account. Brilliant! We've got enough to worry about without you freaking geniuses calling us crooks when we're the custodians of your ridiculous mess of a feeble attempt to code a Web 2.0 knock-off of "Netflix meets Craigslist . . . but in ALL FLASH!" You should call us WSJ, Web Sty Janitors, because that's work you give us. - indicas, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10Real SEOs do not offer their services... those who can't cut it on their own do.
- galen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I worked for a company that advertised as being an "ethical seo". The second day i was there they had me hiding keywords on webpages. I never went back for a 3rd day.
- Schezar, on 10/12/2007, -6/+9Inaccurate story.
Should read "ALL SEOs are crooks?" - lkmbrd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's like with anything else, you have to shop around and make educated purchase decisions.
- Kazrog, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I'm an SEO (one of the legit ones) but I've had to deal with a lot of clients who've gotten scammed by SEO companies. Occasionally I've been working on a campaign where my client outsources to another SEO or email marketer in addition to me at the same time, and I've been astounded by the BS, such as sending fake website metrics that have outlandishly high numbers, when our real metrics on our server show zero new hits. When confronted they'll make up some fake technobabble reason why the results don't jive, which is of course hilarious to somebody like me who also has a strong IT background... but not so hilarious to the client who spent $10 G's on a massive campaign.
I will say that most SEOs are scammers, and that the real SEOs don't make any promises. - etruscan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4It's not all about content, unfortunately. You could have the best article in the world about Elephants, but Wikipedia will still beat you on the SERPS. Why? More links. It's all about the links. Sadly, there's no better way to indicate the popularity of a page without becoming intrusive.
- CrimsonBlur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes, it's a scam because SEO companies rip you off for services they won't even elaborate on with their clients. They won't tell you what they're doing because if they did, everyone would just go to their Web developer friends and ask for their help with a few things and be done with it for hundreds of dollars less. I'm not saying that what SEO companies do is irrelevant, I'm saying that hiring them to do what they do is a waste of money because they rip you off. Big difference.
- fakerjohn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5That's right. I am an SEO and, "I am not a crook." I work for a web design company and optimize sites when I'm not making edits or building sites from scratch. While it's not just flipping a switch like so many people would like to believe, I have helped bring ten sites out of the depths to the "top 5" positions for certain keywords and phrases in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. SEO, like any consultant work is about helping people make better decisions.
If an SEO doesn't talk to you about your site's marketing, yeah, they're probably ripping you off. You'll know when you're getting good SEO advice when you hear specific ideas about themes, links, content, accessibility, text, user experience, code utility, target industry marketing, off-the-site publicity and, yes, even server technology. It's a LOT of work to make a website popular enough to get found on Google.
PS: Half of the job is getting the client to stop acting like a crook: "No, you should not put invisible text and links at the bottom of your page." You wouldn't believe the number of Vice Presidents who insist their marketing departments carry out orders like that. - sicc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yea, unique content is 60% of the battle. Since I'm illiterate without spell checker and hate writing, I always hire writers. You can get a decent 1000 word article written up for $15. The SE's get hard-ons for unique content. =P
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I run a large adult website with unique written content, we currently have around 1,500 articles (reviews) of pay sites, and have some of the top sites in the world linking to us. We have been online for 5 years, and I think we have one of the best looking sites around too. I've sent numerous letters to various SEO firms, but nothing ever seems to happen. To me I think my site should be sooo juicy for the right SE marketer, I really don't get it. One of our competitors is killing us at the moment though, so there must be things we could be doing better.
Since we don't "optimize" you'd think someone would step up and say "hey! you could be doing so much better" but I never seem to get that. Maybe they're almost as clueless as I am? Would love to talk to someone that really knows. The people that I know for sure are making a killing with the big G don't talk at all.
PS: We trade with the people who have the #1 ranking for "porn" in google too. - dtfinch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If making pages more readable and accessible to search engines makes someone a crook, then I'm guilty as charged.
Most of SEO is avoiding stupidity. Some people accidentally make dynamic sites that are a never ending forest of unique urls, wih many url variations leading to the same content. This gets you improperly and often incompletely indexed, and maybe even penalized. Others have sections isolated by javascript links that search engines can't follow. I've seen a lot of sites where almost every single page has the same title. People are less likely to click search results with titles that don't match what they're looking for. And the worst sin is building an entire website in Flash.
Good SEO practices are something every web developer needs to learn. I wouldn't trust a third party either. - dtfinch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's sad to see some SEO companies using blackhat techniques that haven't worked in years. Besides the risk of getting you penalized, users don't click search engine results where the summary is a jumble of keywords.
Besides, when a company sees one of their competitors using banned techniques to improve their ranking, they'll often report them, and days later the competitor's site drops from the search index. :) - fakerjohn, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5So, if you do the SEO, it's good . . . but if somebody else does the SEO and calls it SEO, it's a scam.
Right. - ddd7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Great Point, An Educated Consumer is the Best Customer!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Why you hatin' G?
- Kazrog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm not cheating the engines as an SEO. What I DO promise is that I will do copy review to optimize a site's content and coding approach (getting rid of tables, making clean CSS code, etc.) so that the search engines are able to spider the relevant content efficiently. I manage things such as Google Site Maps, and I also manage the paid keyword campaigns such as AdWords for my clients. I also advise the client to do things like blogging and link swapping with relevant sites in their industry of focus. This is all very grassroots SEO and is more focused on getting targeted, relevant visitors from people who are actually likely to become the client's customers. It's not shotgun marketing, it's surgical precision marketing.
What I DON'T promise is specific results or page ranking. What my clients have ALL seen is a moderate boost in conversions, and a small increase in hits. And it is definitely because of my work. What I do as an SEO is completely a legitimate business. At the end of the day, I'm basically just a web developer with a marketing focus, doing very conventional things like CSS and meta tags. No trickery involved, just clean code and relevant original content. - Apreche, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2There is no reason to SEO. It is impossible to do such a thing ethically. If you do anything to artificially improve search engine ranking, you are cheating the system. Making 1000 accounts to digg up your story is not ethically different than what any SEO ever has or will do. Concentrate on making the design and content of your site as good as they can be. The search engines know where to find you. If your site is worth seeing, it will show up in search results. If you really need to move from page 5 to page 1 on Google, there is only one ethical way to do so. That way is to buy adwords. SEOs can go to hell. All they do is game a system to make it less useful for everyone else.
- Thrag, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I've dealt with a lot of SEO companies and so far they all have been a waste of money (I won't say crooks because they were reputable, didn't make crazy promises, and believed in their methods, but in the end they were useless). We even had an in house SEO guy, who of course could never actually explain his methodology. You'd think he was just keeping his knowledge secret, but it turns out he had none, he was a complete idiot who got by on a combination of the complete lack of effective metrics and reporting to validate the effect of changes and a brief lucky streak. If you are doing SEO, either by yourself or contracting another company to do it, you must have reports that clearly show the results of the changes. SEO when it comes down to it is a trial an error process no matter what the self proclaimed experts say, so if you don't have accurate reports and a good methodology to test results you are just wasting your time and money.
This is not to say that there are not legitimate SEO techniques, but these are all very basic and will only get you small gains. And as someone said above, if you want your site to rank you need decent original content. That is the end all be all of SEO. You can take your existing site and optimize it to get small gains, but if you want huge gains you need unique content. - jonj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1buyer beware
- isnoop, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Aah, the Rapid City Journal: The sole newspaper of my home town. You'll never see any other paper start an article with "Argh!"
They speak the truth, though. The SEO kings have no clothes. - Azselendor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I disagree, anyone can do search engine optimization with a few free tools, a good word processer, and willing to take the time to relentlessly work on building links.
- Charlotte_Web, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Want to know who the best SEO's are? Go to Google and type in "Search Engine Optimization".
Logically, that should be the best of the best. - sicc, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4This is absolutely 100% true.
99% of "SEOers" are nothing more than scam artists.
80% of them "guarantee" top placement for a given keyword, WRONG. That alone is a warning bell. Nobody can guarantee anything when it comes to SE's except the very best of the best SEOers, like the top 1%. And that top 1% are much too budy making money off their own sites to be screwing around doing SEO for other people. - CrimsonBlur, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4To answer the question posed in the Digg title: YES. There is no such thing as a company that only does "SEO" services that will not rip you off and waste your time. They're all crooks. I'm a Web developer and whenever one of my business associates or friends or anyone mentions anything related to search engine optimization I roll my eyes and tell the not to waste their money. Many of them have annual fees, etc., and those are the very worst kind of scammers. I usually tell them just to let me know if they want me to take a look at their site and tell them what needs improvement, etc. and what they need to do to market them self better on the Web. If they feel like I can help them then I will for a much more fair price and I don't have to guarantee results because I've already been honest with them about what's going on.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3If it makes money, it makes sense.
- goingmobile, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Becoming a hardcore seo takes years of practice that cannot be tought in college. After starting up an online business and spending tons of money on addicting ppc, I learned how to do it myself. A true SEO will never ever give up his secrets, most of what you read here and in some guides are just the obvious basics, hence the reason people think they are crooks. SeoRenegades.com will show you the rise in traffic through your own statistics without a contract, that should be the way its done all over!
- bglodde, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1If you're already a web developer, a half a day or so of reading will teach you all you need to know about SEO. It's really not anything deep and definitely not worth hiring an organization to "optimize" anything.
- nils, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Ha! Let me get that straight. "Fraudulent" SEOs make promises they then can't or won't keep. "Real" SEOs make no promises. I guess that means you can't break any promises. Because you made none. Uh huh. It's like a rainmaker or other snake oil salesman trying to legitimize his witch doctor act.
SEO is, by its very nature, unethical, because it doesn't optimze the search, it doesn't help users find the best or most relevant content; it just cheats a random site up in the ranks.
You, and all other SEOs, should be ashamed of what you are doing. - fakerjohn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Yeah, and that happens too.
If you suspect your SEO has done villainous things to your site, examine your source code for HUGE blocks of keywords and links and use Yahoo's Site Explorer (type "link:mysite.com" into Yahoo) to try and see if they're using your site in a link scheme. "Bad Neighborhood Linking" is where Google will really get you. It's OK, if you're being linked to by MFA (made for Ads) sites but if you're linking back to them you're being screwed. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Well then optimize this: go ***** yourself!
- sicc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"It's people like that who throw $80,000 at an 'ASP .NET version of Ebay' who turn around and say "All SEO's are crooks," when they spend $500 on an SEO they found on Craigslist who tells them he'll get them number one for "big shiny widgets." You didn't get scammed, you're just stupid!"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cabinets
See JWP Inc.?
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=text+message&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
1 - 10 of about 243,000,000
See textmessage.cc?
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=text+message&mkt=en-US&form=QBRE
See textmessage.it?
Want me to keep going? I'm not stupid, I know what I'm talking about. Like I said, 99% of so called SEO companies are total BS. The people who actually know wtf they're doing are doing it to their own sites, making much more money than they could doing it for others. Plus, lots of the good SEO companies are black hat anyway, grey hat even. - fakerjohn, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4Bullcrap, dude. We have clients begging us every day to do SEO work for them. It's not about guaranteeing anybody anything. It's about OPTIMIZATION. If the site that you spend tens of thousands of dollars on every month in advertising and maintenance is a piece of crap in terms of code and you have no clue who links to it, it would be a good idea for you to hire someone to say, "HEY, LISTEN UP, YOUR SITE SUCKS." Most site owners wait far too long into their site's lifecycle to get professional criticism.
It's people like that who throw $80,000 at an 'ASP .NET version of Ebay' who turn around and say "All SEO's are crooks," when they spend $500 on an SEO they found on Craigslist who tells them he'll get them number one for "big shiny widgets." You didn't get scammed, you're just stupid! - yonnermark, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I do my own SEO. The only reason I don't do it for other people is because I'd need to be bent to make money and/or get results
- Barman, on 10/12/2007, -9/+5(Why yes I am replying to my own comment)
After reading the actual article rather than the commentary, I take back some of my link-bait heat.
There are Seo-Crooks out there...they will YOU find through spam, or telemarketing (Yes, I've actually dealt with one before and the results fell flat). The good seo firms? Well, you'll find them. - Barman, on 10/12/2007, -11/+7Just some "link bait" for Scholz. While yes, there are some crooks out there (just like any other industry), there are good SEO people out there that aren't promising the world, charging a fortune, or giving your company false hope. The top seo companies can charge 4-5 digits a month (and rightly so), but that doesn't mean there aren't good small to medium range companies out there that can produce similar results (albeit it make take longer or be on a smaller, localized level)
I will agree that there seem to be a lot more seo-crooks out there than other industries...likely because they're using their bullsh*t to sell you bullsh*t.
Just because you don't get linked from searchenginewatch or other topical authority, doesn't mean you're not good at what you do. What if you don't like blogging and writing? What if you focus on small local businesses only? These are the questions I ask this person who is clearly trying to bait people to her site (selling website design services, and most likely SEO.) - brickguy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1In order to say that most are you would have to know all. Nobody knows all.
- joaob, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1I can just here legitimate "white hat" SEO's jumping out their office windows now.
The free ride will soon be over.
meta keyword = it was good while it lasted - yonnermark, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1I don't quite know how to word this politely but.... "GOOGLE IT DUMMY"
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1www.googleityoumoron.com (i didn't make it a link on purpose, to teach you to move your mouse more often)
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