Signs You Could Have the Incorrect SEO Consultant

Saturday, July 31st, 2010 at 8:39 pm

Search engine optimization is definitely an intimidating prospect for most of us, which why there is a surge in SEO consulting firms and consultants.

Unfortunately, SEO is not an exact science, which makes it easy for fly-by night SEO firms to convince people to spend thousands of dollars while providing only limited results. Fortunately, if you know what to look for, then identifying lower quality SEO consultants can be fairly simple.

Here are 5 of the scariest statements that your SEO consultant can make. If you hear any of these then, you might want to look for a replacement, and fast.

Guaranteed Results

Since SEO isn’t theory, guaranteed results simply aren’t possible. If they promise that your website will be on the first page of Google, then there is a good chance that they are either talking about an Adwords campaign (which will ending up costing you a lot money), or have some fundamental misconceptions about SEO. It is important to understand that Google has a fleet of people tweaking the search engine algorithm on an almost constant basis. In fact, Matt Cutts estimated that every year the algorithm may be modified up to 400 times. Even though the changes are often only slight modifications, they still may have an affect on your website.

Buying Links

In case your SEO consultant primarily really wants to buy links which could cost lots of money, then it’s time to move ahead. First, anyone and everyone can buy links, even you. In fact, most people could be pretty good at it in a very short amount of time. But if all they do is buy links, then why do need them? They have essentially become nothing more than a link broker. It is important to have a well rounded SEO strategy and if your potential SEO consultant cannot provide one, then find one who can. There are a lot of great options out there.

Talking Over You

When an SEO consultant tries to speak over you, they may be proving one of two possibilities (maybe both). First, they simply think that they are better than you, smarter than you, and you will never understand what they are talking about, so why try. Keep in mind, you are hiring them. You are doing them the favor. There is no reason for them to talk down to you, at minimum it is just very unprofessional, which says a lot about what you should expect while they are your SEO consultant. The second possibility is that they simply don’t understand SEO well enough to explain it in simple terms. If they cannot explain it, then they don’t truly understand it.

There are several obvious warning signs as well like the utilization of black hat SEO techniques and spamming social sites, however these 3 actions are always a guaranteed tip off that your SEO consultant is performing more damage than good. Avoid SEO consultants that try to guarantee results, focus primarily on buying links, and always seem to be trying to talk over your head. These three signs are a sure sign that things will not turn out in your favor.

To your success online,