SEO Scams – Who Bears The Blame?

I had the pleasure of reading an article this morning by Ian Lurie of Conversation Marketing titled I Am Not A Carpetbagger. (ht: @LisaBarone) In the article, Ian questions the rationale used by clients who have been victimized by an SEO scam who are now dealing with a professional SEO agency.

they won’t hire another practitioner without 25 references and a complete SEO training course.

I enjoyed the article because it’s a situation all SEOs have to face at one time or another. It seems the typical progression – especially for a small business – is to start with the DIY website (something the 14 yr video-gaming nephew made), move on to the “Top Rankings for $99.95″ sucker’s plan and then finally, jaded and more than a little frustrated, turn to a professional agency.

Sidenote: This last step is ok with us – we love being able to offer professional service to clients and restore their faith in Internet Marketing. Bring us your broken, abused and hacked up websites. We’ll make it all better.

Where Ian gets frustrated – and rightfully so – is with the attitude that the client is 100% the victim, and the new SEO provider might jump through 1,000 hoops to prove their credibility.

I’m sick of it all because these smart people have no excuse. The carpetbaggers of old went into battle against an unarmed opponent: Half-starved, semi-literate people whose homes had been devastated by the US Civil War.

Everyone else: You are not unarmed. You are smart. You are sharp cookies. I’ve seen it myself. You’ve built businesses, negotiated contracts, refined your pitch and generally kicked ass.

If you hired an attorney and they promised you they could win a multi-million dollar lawsuit against a major corporation in just weeks, you’d be suspicious. But you didn’t go to law school. Somehow, you just know.

Bottom line, if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is. If you fall for a bad offer just cut your losses and seek out a professional to right the ship. If your basement was flooding because the off-the-books plumber who works for cash after his day job shift at WalMart made a mess of your pipes, you wouldn’t stop the legit plumber at the door and start phoning his references. You need a professional to get the job done – SEO is no longer a luxury. By making life difficult for your new partner – knitpicking the contract, squeezing the payments, treating them like a car salesman – you are only delaying and impairing the healing that needs to be done. Each day and every delay cost you money.

Real professionals in every industry are not cheap – but they add value. It may cost a few hundred dollars to get a late-night visit from that plumber, but it beats waiting for morning. Having a lawyer draft or review your contracts has a cost, but that cost is far less than the potential fall-out from a poorly written document. SEO provides value to every website, with packages and price points that are suitable to each business model. We encourage every business owner to evaluate wisely the potential value from implementing SEO in a professional manner – and to identify the to-good-to-be-true programs for what they are.