https://tinloof.com/blog/the-seo-scam-62000-dollars-later
Seen that on HN. SEO is really hated there it seems.
I try to defend it where I can because it's going to happen anyway.
Seems like lazy and outdated techniques vs informed technical SEO & some tricks people have, whether morally right or wrong that's an age old argument...
Can say from a search engine perspective some sites are a mess, like 300KB of JS and CSS and not a single displayable word on the screen to be seen yet. Google used to limit to 100KB. No wonder they had to ditch it.
Wow, what a nightmare client.
4k/mo for a national campaign for keys like :
front end development
brochure website development
marketing website development
"We decided to seek an agency's help to rank for "business" terms - you heard that right - specifically those related to web application creation, marketing websites, design, and similar terms."
Why the hell do these idiots want to sell "marketing websites" and "marketing website development" when they can't even grasp SEO basics? This agency should have run.
This client is dumb as a bag of rocks if they thought they would get solid leads on this kind of traffic for 4k/mo. How many actual, real "marketing website" companies are out there actually doing their own seo ya think guys? IDIOTS
"Digital PR, it turns out, is a fancy term for buying backlinks, a practice not allowed by Google."
Yeah, go ahead and follow all of the rules for things "allowed" and published by G and see how far you rank. IDIOTS
I see dumb mistakes and ideas on this project all around. Even if it were double or triple the money, thank God they didn't hire us.
We almost never sell SEO alone any more. Something like this should start with PPC to get a list of the lowest hanging fruit keywords that drive the most leads. Then build SEO around that list and grow from there. A lot of agencies don't seem to optimize for leads, and just clicks.
These days, we are taking it one step further and connecting the client's CRM on the backend to ppc. This gives us not only closed lead data, but revenue per job, so we can optimize for overall ROI instead of just leads. Then SEO *that*. When I can't talk a client into this is when I start envisioning emails from them with quotes around terms they don't fully understand like I see annoyingly littered throughout this article. Have to say it again, IDIOTS.
Solid post there Dras and it brings me back to some of my old clients.
I did wonder if it was a click bait article, but have not been back in the archive to see if those pages actually existed.
There is something that does not ring true. You spelling it out like that Dras highlights it even more.
Eyes wide open? As you say, selling marketing without the basic grasp of how it works?