5 Most Common Lies Told by SEO Companies to Swindle Their Clients

I've worked in and around search engine optimization (SEO) for several years now. But what never ceases to amaze me are the half-truths and outright lies that so many SEO companies use to rope in clients and take their money.

Unfortunately, there is no barrier to entry within the SEO field, or the Internet marketing field as a whole. Anyone can "hang out their sign" and proclaim to be an expert. Thus, it's up to the reputable SEO folks out there (and I throw my own hat into this lot) to raise the bar, set the standards, and call out the shady firms who would bring down our collective reputation.

Here's my little contribution to that end.

Five of the most common lies used by SEO firms to dupe their clients:

1. You need a brand new website ... yours is not "search engine friendly."

This is usually a ploy used by "full-service" Internet marketing firms to extract large (and often unnecessary) design fees from clients. Anybody in the search engine optimization field knows that a complete redesign for SEO purposes is usually unnecessary, at best, and possibly even bad for business. If a website has structural problems that impede its search engine performance, they can almost always be resolved with minor changes to the site.

There are plenty of good reasons to redesign a website. Often, websites need to be redesigned because their designs are outdated, or because they create usability problems for visitors. But redesigning from the ground up simply to make the site more "search engine friendly" is a bogus notion used for money-making purposes. If your Internet marketing firm tells you this, you should fire them for gross incompetence.

2. People do not read website content ... they only scan it.

Some web marketing and SEO firms will espouse this nonsense because (A) they lack in-house writing talent and (B) they plan to "keyword stuff" pages for SEO purposes to the point of creating repulsive gibberish.

"We will use the same keywords over and over, you see. And the search engines will love it, you see. And you'll get top rankings for that phrase. You see?"

What these companies neglect to tell their clients is that (A) all interested consumers will reach a reading stage at some point; (B) keyword-redundant content usually comes off like a five-year-old wrote it, thus repelling those interested consumers; and (C) keyword repetition alone will not bring search engine success.

3. SEO will generate a ton of leads for you!

Search engine optimization can generate traffic, but it cannot produce web leads or inquiries. This is one of the most common misconceptions in website marketing. I've spoken to business owners who had thousands of website visitors each month, but rarely got any leads or inquiries from their website. The simple reason was that they had no lead-generation mechanisms in place.

If you pour a lot of money into an SEO campaign but neglect to pour your energy into effective lead generation as well, you will likely be headed for disappointment. Search engine optimization has a role, and that role is to increase qualified traffic to a website. But unless you capitalize on that traffic with good old-fashioned marketing techniques, it will do you little good.

4. We can guarantee you #1 ranking in Google.

This one is more of a half-truth than an outright lie. But it's still used for deceitful purposes so I've added it to the list. Here's how the scam works.

The SEO company keyword-stuffs a particular page of the client's website with some obscure or overly specific phrase that is easy to rank for in search engines. Then, when the website does in fact rank well for that phrase, they say "Look how great we are!"

Here's the problem with this. The only kind of rankings that are worth pursuing are the rankings that bring qualified traffic to the website. Let me give you an example:

Let's say I had a client who built custom homes in Tallahassee, Florida. The phrases that would bring him the most traffic would include phrases like "custom homes in Tallahassee" ... "custom home builders Tallahassee" ... "New homes in Tallahassee" ... you get the picture. As a competent SEO professional, those are the phrases I would focus on for ranking purposes.

But here's what the shady SEO company with the bold promises would do. They would write a page of content around an obscure or overly specific phrase such as "best custom luxury homes in Tallahassee area of Florida." They would repeat this specific phrase over and over, point some links at the page, and lo and behold it suddenly ranks well for the silly phrase "best custom luxury homes in Tallahassee area of Florida."

The only problem is, nobody is searching such a ridiculous phrase (except the SEO company and the client). So their rankings are worthless -- they will produce no traffic for the client, and thus no business.

I am not exaggerating here. I've seen countless SEO companies brag about such things on the home pages of their websites. That would be like me bragging that I rank #1 for "Brandon Cornett law firm marketing guy." Who would actually search such a phrase, besides me?

5. SEO success takes years ... regardless of what industry you're in.

This one usually comes from the search engine optimization company that simply doesn't know what it's doing. I agree that the first part of this statement has some truth to it. But the second half is where the lie comes into the picture (or maybe just the ignorance).

SEO success in hyper-competitive fields like mortgage lending can, in fact, take a long time to achieve. But there are two different kinds of success in SEO -- the short-term and the long-term.

If, for example, I had a client with a brand new mortgage website, I would explain to them that top rankings for generic mortgage phrases are going to be a while in coming, no matter how much effort I put into their SEO. But by focusing on longer, more specific phrases (that people are actually searching), we could achieve plenty of short-term successes on the way to those long-term goals.

The other part of this blanket statement that's false is the "regardless of industry" clause. Some industry niches are not yet competitive online, especially when you get geographically specific. For example, if I sold bulldozer parts in Michigan, I could probably achieve top rankings in a few months or less -- even with a brand new website. After all, how many bulldozer part suppliers could there be in one state?

If somebody tells you that SEO always takes years to succeed with regardless of your industry, they simply don't know what they're doing.

* You may republish this article online if you retain the author's note below with active hyperlinks intact. A fair exchange, don't you think? Copyright 2007, Brandon Cornett.

About the Author
Brandon Cornett is the owner of Web Smart Lawyer, an Internet marketing firm that caters to lawyers and law firms. He is also the author of a lawyer marketing book that you can download for free at http://www.websmartlawyer.com