How to Spot a Bad SEO Firm

Posted by Upright Team

Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting recently made an interesting post in his “Ramblings About SEO” blog titled “11 Ways to Recognize a Bad SEO Firm”. We liked it enough to share it with our readers as well. Here’s our summary of what he had to say, but you can also click the link above to read Eric’s blog.

No matter whom you choose to work with when it comes to marketing your web site and making it a success, here are some tips to help you weed out the losers and find someone who will help you meet your goals.

The SEO thinks meta keywords are meaningful and focuses lots of attention on them. We just wrote a blog post about this ourselves: SEO Myth #3 If I put keywords in my meta tags, this helps my rankings.
Makes mass submissions of your site to the search engines, offers to submit your site to 1000’s of engines, etc. This doesn’t help – letting the search engines find you naturally through well built links does.
Recommends or sets up 302 redirects for any reason, whether it is to redirect an old domain to a new one, to redirect multiple domains to the main site, or to redirect old file names to renamed files. Redirects should always be 301s. We mentioned setting up this type of redirect in our blog on buying multiple domains.
The SEO does reciprocal linking for your site – trades links with another site. There are limits, exceptions, and rules here, and should not be a major focus of your strategy.
Uses the same link building strategy for every client. Not all links are of equal value to all sites. Quality links to a site should be relevant to that site’s theme, and match the types of links that your competition has.
They tell you to build a bunch of micro sites to help your main site rank better, or to get more ranking for other keywords. If you want your main site to rank better, build additional focused content and quality links that will help your site rank even better. Every new site you build requires you to start over and build all new links and content for that site, so it’s much easier to build on to what you’ve already put so much hard work into.
Recommends that you post your site at multiple domains. This is duplicate content, and just won’t work. There are proper ways to move your site to a new domain so it doesn’t hinder your progress with the engines. If an SEO tells you to host your site on multiple domains for any reason, refer them to our blog on buying multiple domains.
Includes hidden text, cloaking, very tiny text, hiding text behind layers or images, or any other tricks that may seem sneaky. The search engines are smart and will figure it out if you’re trying to trick them in any way.
The SEO claims to know the Google algorithm. Not even any one person in Google knows the Google algorithm – not Matt Cutts, not Sergey Brin, not Larry Page. This information is guarded so tightly that only parts of the algorithm are known by several different Google engineers and you would have to get them all in a room and put their brains together to figure it out. Even then, good luck. If they told you, they’d have to kill you…
The SEO guarantees a #1 ranking. You can’t guarantee something that you can’t control. As much as we would LOVE it, SEOs have no control over search engine algorithms, index updates, etc. An ethical, SEO firm will bring you traffic that converts to visitors, leads and sales. They will know the strategies to make your web site work for you. They will help you make more money. That should be the focus of your marketing strategy – not just getting a #1 ranking.
They act all secretive and won’t explain their strategies. You’re paying for it and you deserve to know what is being done to your site. If they are keeping secrets, they are either doing nothing or doing something unethical.

We’d like to extend a special thank you to Eric Enge for sharing his thoughts on how to spot a bad SEO. With so many companies out there claiming to do SEO, it’s important to know the facts and to know how to spot a bad one so you can run far, far away… then give Upright a call. *wink*