SEO agency ethics & why the industry needs a kick in the backside
Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: March 1st, 2007 Published in: Rants n Drama, SEO AgenciesA bit of rant here - I know the whole ethics debate is tired and most people don’t want to read about it these days but I gotta throw in a word or two about it.
I just did a freebie consultancy for a small business - the lady who runs it on her own is completely bewildered by SEO, and having seen her so passionate about her business I gave her a call and straightened a few things out, offering a free basic consultancy (which tbh, is all the site needs - it’s not a competitive market).
During the conversation it came up that she had hired a SEO agency (UK based I gather) a year ago who had done some “SEO” work for her. She had some rankings from the work, but then the agency landed her with a monthly bill for link building work. As she had already spent most of her budget on the initial consultancy, she couldn’t afford what they were charging and hadn’t realised the monthly fee was required so she cancelled the services.
They told her if she cancelled, they would remove the backlinks they built - which they promptly did!
Shower of bastards! You know me - if I knew the name of the agency I’d be outing them right now with a scathing attack on why they are the scum of the industry…
While I am happy to admit that all is fair in business, I think that the very least SEOs have an ethical responsibility to clearly outline what it is they are doing for their clients and what costs / risks are involved. Even putting ethics aside, landing additional fees on people is always - ALWAYS, without exception - going to piss them off. Is that the way you want to run your business?
It is bad enough that we are in a industry where a “professional SEO” will happily offer conjecture and misinformation as “fact”, putting at risk their clients’ sites, but is holding people to ransom really acceptable practice?
IMO things need to change - only so long can businesses go on getting burned by amateurs before there is a call for legislative change. It’s happened so often in the history of marketing - telesales, door to door sales, email marketing, billboard advertising, sports advertising - all have faced a legislative crack down in the past 10 / 20 years, mainly due to businesses taking things to the extreme and ripping people off - how long before SEO gets the same treatment?
After all, if SEOs know one thing for sure - it’s how to push techniques to the extreme!
My pet peeves with the SEO business:
- Lack of disclosure in terms of the risks carried with spammy techniques. I don’t have a problem with spam techniques as such, but I do think that there should be full transparency when selling these services to others.
- Lack of standardisation in terms of professional skills and knowledge. Basically, SEOs selling “facts” that inaccurate.
- Unethical business practices when providing services.
Anyone care to add anything to the list?
MG
Comments
Assholes, it’s c**ts like these that give the SEO industry a bad name, for a start reciprocal linking is dead and has been for a while and for them to actually go and remove the links that they had done that this company had paid for is bitter and skandalous, there are still a few of these dodgy companies about, I got a client recently who had paid a lump some for SEO as well as £100 per month for reciprocal linking, the so called SEO company had done 3 reciprocal links, the site had 0 results on Google, MSN or Yahoo, same keyword stuffed title and description on every page and it was in the supplementals on G, I wont name the company but it could be the same one you are talking about, I felt like I was cleaning up a big mess.
I’d say that in the past around 40% of my client work has come from clients who had been with other SEOs and didn’t get results (or worse, got banned or penalised) - since going freelance, I’ve seen almost 80% of the clients I speak to have had past experience (almost always negative) with other SEO agencies.
There are a few agencies kicking about the UK just now that have a bad rep for killing their client’s sites - I end up hearing their names from businesses once or twice a month.
I think if businesses started looking at legal action for some of the dodgy stuff that was being done to their sites then it could set an interesting precident.
MG
I agree fully with the need to promote greater ethics in SEO - and life in general. Being that the unscrupulous will not abide by good standards I feel that it is incumbent upon ethical SEO providers to educate all prospects. We always set a realistic set of expectations with prospects including a clear statement that “no SEO firm, including ours, can promise any level of results” and further explain in detail what we will do and will not do. I believe that even if we are not the chosen vendor I do want the prospect to be able to select a good and decent provider. I believe that not only is this the proper action to take but that it also creates goodwill that will come back to you. (And if nothing else it makes it more difficult for the low lifes to muck up our business).
Thanks Mom & Dad for teaching me the difference between right and wrong.
Yeh I totally agree. A lot of people would argue that blogs, articles and forum posts, etc somewhat give the game away and it’s more sensible for agencies to keep “what they know” tight to their chests. But as you said, it all works towards educating our consumers which has got to be good for the industry in the long term.
MG