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Stop Offering SEO Services You Bloody Dimwits!

By Rishi | February 3, 2010

Stop Offering SEO Services You Bloody Dimwits!

Snake Oil: It's everywhere!

You thought only Small Businesses got scammed by SEO Snakeoil Salesmen? These days every Tom Dick and Harriet wants to offer SEO services, and the worst offenders I have seen are Web Design agencies in the Big Brand Design world. I have witnessed some seriously daft mistakes and issues that make me wonder how stupid some people are. Simply adding a member of staff who knows “about” SEO does NOT qualify you to take on SEO for your existing clients.

I consult for a few big brand names on occasion, in order to get their SEO strategy in place – they normally have an SEO agency, or are looking to recruit one (I don’t provide ongoing SEO services, I only work as a strategist / consultant / creative concept person). More often than not, in cases when i am called in, the issue is because the SEO agency is a small department of one (or two) in a large Digital Marketing company.

Below are 5 REAL LIFE mistakes I have seen that big web design agencies offering SEO have made:

Sure Fire magic – SEO Pages!

Incredibly, I inherited a project which revealed that the client was advised the only way to rank was by creating “SEO” pages.  The agency built the pages with the directory structure: www.domainname.com/articles/content/sitemap/seopages/bullshitkeywordrich.html

Seriously? Even if I was an idiot I would know not to give that big a spam signal. I might as well submit a spam report for my own fucking site.

We have an amazing Solution for more content!

In short, the web agency tried to sell an option which would allow the client to use the site search function to auto generate “Long Tail Content”. Now that isn’t the kind of stuff a brand needs to get in. It’s borderline blackhat and horrendous for usability. Brands need to try and stay clean, and a real SEO can get them ranking with a little hard work, not spam techniques from 1999.

Flash is SO Pretty!

One build I had the misfortune to learn about was a site wide navigation that was completely locked in flash. The resolution? Add links in the footer to the core pages for search engines. This was a facepalm situation and I nearly murdered someone… For fucks sake people.

OK Honest Mistake but…

Project came to me informally for advice, new redesign killed their organic traffic, but web agency who built the new “search friendly design” went live with the robots instruction:

<meta name=’robots’ content=’noindex,nofollow’ /> (this link is another example that Joost uncovered and NOT the one that I am referring to –  By the way, if you use Fantastico to install WordPress, I would check your privacy settings, some hosts seem to have set it as automatic NOT to allow indexing.)

Press Releases Means Links

Yes. Absolutely. PR is a great way to get the brand association with target keywords. Get on that band wagon and start shelling them out like two rabid rabbits on heat. But for fucks sake stop outsourcing to idiots, or at least check your shit first. The web agency in question sent out PR articles with PPC tracking parameters. Apparently the outsourced writers googled the brands name to get the website URL, clicked on a PPC ad and simply copy pasted that URL.

Yeah, THOSE links will count. Fuckwits.

Enough, or do you want More?

Some Big Name SEO agencies sometimes aren’t far behind from being stupid:

We Haz Links!

Don’t try and sell me your #1 potential for “keyword x” guaranteed. You may be a big agency, but everyone knows that you own a link farm. It may be working for the moment, but I am NOT interested in getting my client penalised for a black hat tactic. This agency has contacted a number of my clients. Go. The. Fuck. Away.

Your SEO Agency is Crap!

Cold contacting me with negative PR about current SEO agency not only makes me want to out you, but makes you lose major credit points. I don’t want to work with people like that. At least two SEO companies called up the brand I was consulting for after some negative (and incorrect) press went out in the media about their current SEO agency. For fucks sake. You give Judas a bad name.

Concussion Conclusion

Seriously peeps, think about what you are doing and offering. If your strengths as an agency aren’t in SEO (i.e you don’t have someone who has ninja skills) then forget offering it. Seriously. That way I wont have to come and clean up your mess and actually do stuff that I enjoy.

Rishi Lakhani is a Search Strategist and works with a range of brands. He is a Guest Blogger for SEOBullshit. You can find Rishi on Twitter or on his Blog.

Photo Credit: Opacity

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  • Stop Offering SEO Services You Bloody Dimwits!

Topics: Business Bullshit, Notable Nut Jobs | 57 Comments »

Posted on 03 February 2010 by Rishi Lakhani

has written 4 articles for SEO Bullshit

Newer Comments →
  • http://www.morepro.com/ Cory H

    My favorites are the design agencies that claim “SEO friendly” designs or that they “know” SEO, but then build a dynamic website w/out taking into consideration even the basics (static URLs, etc.).

    Shopping carts that are supposed to be “SEO friendly” too… give me a break. (Yes, I know there are some good ones)

    Keep up the good work here.

  • Dr. Pete

    I like when I start looking at someone’s link profile (usually, someone who has “never done anything wrong – EVER!”), and one of the first links I find is on a page called something like:

    http://www.seo-link-market.com/shitlinks/extrashitty.htm

    …along with 500 other links, most of them for Viagra, casinos, Russian mail-order brides, and Russian casinos that sell mail-order Viagra to brides.

    What’s really funny is that I tried 5 made-up domains before I picked that one, and all of them were real. Off to kill myself now.

  • http://www.analyticstraining.co.uk/ Nikki Rae

    Lol….I love it! Well done Rishi

  • Goosh2005

    Rishi, it's SO true. I blogged about this exact same piss-boiling experience just over a week ago. How some people can be so incredulous is beyond me, but big brands who should know better get charged through the nose by agencies who wouldn't be able to fight their way out of a wet paper bag if it involved telling the difference between an H1 and Meta tag.

    My article, if you care to read, What Really Annoys Me? Non-SEO Agencies Who Do SEO (or claim to): http://www.goosh.co.uk/online-marketing/annoys-…

  • http://twitter.com/mosquitohawk Marty Martin

    Word Brother. If I had a dime for every web / marketing / PR / primary school offering SEO services, I wouldn't have to spend so much time on my affiliate sites. ;)

  • Dr. Pete

    I like when I start looking at someone's link profile (usually, someone who has “never done anything wrong – EVER!”), and one of the first links I find is on a page called something like:

    http://www.seo-link-market.com/shitlinks/extrashitty.htm

    …along with 500 other links, most of them for Viagra, casinos, Russian mail-order brides, and Russian casinos that sell mail-order Viagra to brides.

    What's really funny is that I tried 5 made-up domains before I picked that one, and all of them were real. Off to kill myself now.

  • http://www.morepro.com/ Cory H

    First of all, I must have the best timing… my initial comment was posted right as “Disqus” was being implemented.

    Some other comments to include on Rishi's are:

    Design agencies – Don't claim you “know” SEO & then build a POS site w/ dynamic URLs, etc.

    Shopping cart providers – When an SEO company is contacting you about the most simple changes to improve your products' performance (for all clients) and you're not even willing to look up the problem… you should be ashamed.

  • rishil

    @Dr Pete ROFL. I actually clicked on the link thinking it must be worth a look. Rick rolling bastard! he he he.

    Seriously though, I would love to see a rant from you over here.

  • http://portentint.myopenid.com/ portentint

    From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I owe you at least 4 beer at the next conference. Now, off to find another bunch of screwups so I can out them on my blog.

  • http://dynamical.biz/blog/ Ani Lopez

    Fantastic solution I've seen several times from an agency to Flash is SO Pretty: “I'll add links in the footer + some text all in same color as background for people not to notice”.

    My favorite one too: http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&q=“Submission+to+ma…

  • planethurf

    Incredible! 3 uses of the phrase 'For Fucks Sake!' Keyword stuffing at its best! ;o)

  • http://www.huomah.com theGypsy

    Hey man… have a look at the footer text… Get's better, uber stuffing is how we roll!!

  • http://www.seoclinic.co.uk/ BarryHurford

    Marketing Genius! If you want to get noticed – do it a totally different [fucking] way! Respect! ;o)

  • http://andybeard.eu AndyBeard

    Rant: SEOs who cover so many rants in one post they won't leave anything else for others to rant about

  • rishil

    He He He Andy, I am sure there are enough rants to go around…

  • sabsa

    I've had fantastic results with printed press releases.
    The text was printed in a small column in their newspaper and the software had automatically wrapped the URL over to the next row, so it read “www.subject-noun.tld” and not “www.subjectnoun.tld”.
    So when in a meeting they proudly they shared this folder (circulation: the greater City area), I was the first that noticed. Immediately tried to pick up the dashed domain, but it was owned by a competing company. Head. Smack.

  • http://www.wristwatches.co.uk/ Shahid

    Quality post Rishil…..Part of the reason I think many SEOs just want to work client side….

  • http://www.seobegin.com safcblogger

    Some numpty will register that domain long after this post has gone to sleep (yes i clicked it as well).

    Rishi as ever you really made me laugh with your rant

  • http://www.making8seo.com/ Adam J. Humphreys

    I posted about that last week on Twitter.. Hostgator has their fantastico wordpress installs set to nofollow by default. I discovered this upoun installing the SEO plugin for wordpress which I always do for optimizing page titles etc. They also had all their shared hosting accounts all set to anonymous browsing allowed by default through WHM which I quickly fixed. I wonder how many people go out there with out noticing this kind of stuff. These kind of details are huge

  • http://www.making8seo.com/ Adam J. Humphreys

    One of Bruce Clay's fundamentals of instruction in his book is about siloing which is the categorization of pertinent information. Are you suggesting that categories of relevant content is sending out a signal for spam? This post is a little ambiguous in regards to that.

    Both Matt Cutts, and Bruce Clay talk about the positives of site structure. What exactly about site structure is so negative?

    Are you actually suggesting that someone was ridiculous enough to have a category called /SEOPAGES/ ?? I can appreciate that there's going to be landing pages, and categories, but a category called SEOPAGES on a site is laughable.

  • jeremybrown

    Loving this new stuff
    Rishi
    Totally agree, if the link farm technique still works its only a matter of time for it to fail and all your clients simultaneously get blacklisted.

    The real problem is too many agencies are giving out SEO based on reading one or 2 articles or relying on a “SEO optimised CMS”.

  • rishil

    Adam – I love categorisation, if done correctly. That part of the post is exactly what it says – the only thing I have stripped out of the URL is the domain name.
    So yes /SEOPAGES was the actual folder naming convention. By an agency that sold monthly highend SEO services.

  • http://seoaware.com/ Melissa – SEO Aware

    I love you even more now!

  • http://yoyoseo.com DanaLookadoo

    Oh, gosh… I'm not usually one to rant, but… Recent head-shaking experience – Web agency that “sells” SEO:

    1. Says SEO doesn't have to be part of initial development process, can be done “later” or “after the fact”

    2. H1 tag as site-wide CSS on sites sold as “SEO”

    3. http://cityname-webdesign.com/ as duplicate URL that displays for agency's main site. (add www canonicalisation to this as well)

    4. Blog posts formatted as: http://www.agency.com/blog/index.php/year/month…

    5. Appends company name to every page, even About page so title displays as “About Agency Name | Agency Name”

    6. Kicker – Sitewide footer link to agency in client sites as “Designed by…”

    7. Double Kicker – Client pays for SEO and doesn't know what they paid for!

    Nice job, Rishi! I just hope SEO consumers will read and learn from this, enough to question practices by web design agencies. What looks pretty on the outside is often not SEO under the hood!

  • jillwhalen

    ROFL…I did a review for a site that had used that same stupid SEO company!

    /seopages/ ROFL!

  • http://twitter.com/martokus martokus

    Xaxa I can tell the same about you probably although I don't know what projects you've done but its always fun to read the rants of smart bloggers that think they are the greatest SEOs of all time :D Fuck no. Almost all of the “big industry names” that I've read are nothing more than a talented bloggers that can only sell themselves but are in fact so empty of content. You're proud of doing the SEO for top Fortune companies – axaxaxa what a fun. What are we talking about – sites with obvious potential of becoming #1 that just need some code fixes and can conquer the serps. How can one of you self proclaimed SEO gurus cannot show me a project that he started from zero and climb up to #1 for the top words in a competitive niche in a year time? Simply because you cannot achieve it – its always easier to take over for a site of a big brand with lots of money and established name which requires some onsite fixes to become serps killer.
    Real SEOs don't sell their services – they create their own web sites and rank them. I've been in the travel industry for few years and I know how tough it is to rank #1 for “[popular city] hotel” and I've seen few sites doing this. And you know what? None of them was using SEO agencies or consultants, they were doing everything alone, inhouse.
    On the opposite end most mainstream top SEO experts rely on blogging and not actions to catch some big stupid fish with money. And the Fortune companies just think – well this guy is popular, obviously he is good SEO. Mistake – this guy is popular, obviously he is a good blogger.
    SEO is measured with results not online popularity. I can give examples of popular agencies costing 5k a month which after a short audit on the work I've found useless crap however pretending that they are great. Budgets pumped to the max, messy and complicated reports just to hide the truth that no result is achieved however.
    At last I would like to say I don't blame you, I guess you've found your niche of stupid business owners that have no idea about SEO so you can manipulate them easily. Just don't flame the guys that do real job so you can better sell your own bullshit.

  • rishil

    1. I am not flaming people that do a decent job, only the idiots that sell bullshit services.
    2. I dont consider myself a good SEO at all actually.
    3. I dont need to blog to get business – all my work is via reccomendations – and I started out as a small business SEO – and have managed to get many of my small business clientsto to top positions in competitive niches – and not by work I have done, but by advising them to do it right.
    4. I would not work for a fortune 500 company.
    5. I have worked inhouse in the travel industry. I know a lot of people who do SEO for travel too. And I have worked with teams who have gotten top positions, not just for “popular city hotel” but for “popular city”.
    6. I blog because I want to – not because I need to.
    7. You sound like a guy that would love to rant – why not send us a post about what you really think instead of just the comment? This blog is for all SEOs who want to rant.

  • http://www.vanvessum.nl/ Steven van Vessum

    Hahaha awesome post. I'm afraid you're right! In the Netherlands it's no different. I've actually writting a post about the exact same subject (in Dutch) :)

  • http://www.saloninteriors.com/ Lisa

    Oh I like this.

  • http://randyduermyer.com/ Randy Duermyer

    I laugh pretty hard when I see spam comments in my blog for some nitwit outfit commenting on a post that his SEO firm can get me number one rankings. They must really think I'm a freakin' idiot – and that everyone else is too.

  • skennedy33

    Dig it. Honesty finally. Too bad I have been duped.

  • eggbrain

    I can only hope to one day become an SEO Ninja, I'm new to the methodology. I just tell my small business clients I'll do my best to get them visits and conversions.
    I just kind of do it without selling it. I'm reading this series: http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyte… and I'm about to read http://sphinn.com/story/140550 and I'm beginning to wonder, can someone actually sell SEO or should it just be something that comes along as a service? I'm fair at it, want to get good, but feel silly charging for it. Is that bad?

  • http://www.Escapingthe9to5.com/ Maren Kate

    Haha, this is AWESOME i just found your blog & wow… I like :) thanks for the post, it made me laugh, which RARELY happens when I read anything to do with SEO.

  • http://www.thomasgemkow.com Thomas Gemkow

    Nice Post. Glad someone is callin' out all the B.S. on the web…

  • http://blog.khmohsin.com/ mohsin

    I can't imagine that anyone can still make such mistakes. If you haven't blogged about this, I had never believed. Specially the first, “SEO pages”! I am totally bewildered ;)

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  • http://www.paslit.com/ sikat

    You have a good point on this buddy. But not at all are making nuts.

  • darklord93

    Yeah, I hate those “agencies” too, because they are stealing my clients and they are creating bad name for the SE optimizers :( I am working on a new project about Skin Care and it will take at least 3 mounts to create some good SEO, but there are people who can get to the top positions only for 1 week…
    Best Regards,
    Sammy

  • michaelwalls

    Although I agree with 90% of stated opinions I must say that normal, optimal, organic page coding is necessary to rank fairly. This should not be an add on service, it should be part of good web design.

    The reason for the “SEO Industry” feeding frenzy is the incompetence of many web designers as they built the web sites in the first place. Then, as the Google patent application went public, some ranking particulars were made available.

    The problem arises when every Tom Dick and Harry wants in on action. THEY have literally turned a legitimate enterprise to shit. This happens in any field as cryptic as the internet. SEO people are now regarded like auto mechanics. There isw a legitimate side to SEO – it is just burried under a pile of bull shit.

    If you have had a bad encounter in this area take this short survey and I will post the major reasons people get duped.
    http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7MP2QBL

  • https://www.xing.com/profile/SEOP_PowerToGrow SEOP.com

    I agree. There are really so many scammers out there offering quick result SEO for website, be it of small businesses or bigger corporations. For this reason, many should be aware of these tricks these scammers do. One advice I have for people who wants to avoid SEO scammers, learn to do your own SEO. Unless you have money to burn on getting service from pros.

    Thanks for sharing this!

  • Jamesclinton

    Seriously say than think about what you are doing and offering. If your strengths as an agency aren’t in SEO (i.e you don’t have someone who has ninja skills) then forget offering it. Seriously. That way people wont have to come and clean up your mess and actually do stuff that they enjoy.
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    Thank you very much Admin.

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  • http://twitter.com/magicrob Rob Duckers

    bloody love it

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  • http://KeywordJump.com/ KeywordJump

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