Search Engine Marketing - Buyer Beware

By Author: John Tang
Total Articles: 512
Comment this article

I just completed a phone conversation with someone who I originally talked with last week after he filled in a form on our website specifically asking about our Ecommerce packages and our SEO Services. I had provided him with some basic information and followed through with an email with links to specific pages / content on our website that were relevant to our conversation.

The interested party who we will call Mr. Prospect was partnering with a few other gentlemen to sell consumer-based household items that are clearly highly competitive i.e. there are over 30 million competing pages for many of the important keywords he shared with me.

Before I called him the first time I did some quick research on the site and found that it was just under construction however I had to shake my head as I also noticed below the fold a long section of white-on-white massive keyword stuffing this is the oldest trick in the book and can get Mr. Prospect delisted from the search engines.

When calling him, I pointed it out gently but with some authority and he indicated that he would talk with the web designer about this. ...
... We left it at that.

Today I called him and we more fully discussed his project, his objectives and where an online strategy fits in. I must say that I genuinely feel sorry for the man. He and his partners quit their jobs and are counting on this new online business to take them to the promised land. What's worse is he is getting some horrible advice from whoever he is dealing with. Besides keyword stuffing, he is being sold packages i.e. 150 backlinks for $8,000 in 4 months, social networking for $xxxx and so on. I know where this is going another casualty of search engine marketers who are not focused on results but focused on certain services that they can bill for and perform; packages. What's missing? RESULTS! What this uninformed consumer does not know is that these packages are not focused on results; and with just a little research on my part, I can guarantee him that putting it all on the pass line or at the race track is probably money better spent.

So, I did only what I could do and that is point out some of what he is missing To give him some plain talk and some free consulting about the realities of SEO that it is not cheap, it requires patience, and it requires a major commitment towards the steady stream of content. I could tell he's never heard this before. I know he did not want to hear it because he is being told that he can do it for a few thousand dollars. I even shared with him some results that we are able to achieve with our clients.

And regarding keyword stuffing I asked him if he had asked his website designer about that. He told me the website designer told him that he was using new technology that makes it impossible for Google to detect this. This pretty much sums it up in my estimation. Mr. Prospect wants to believe and he is ignorant to the facts; he also seems ok with at least one form of trickery. What you have here is a pretty desperate and ignorant consumer being taken advantage of by an SEO company that is just trying to sell packages; looking for sales and not clients. Speaking strictly sales, I probably just wasted about 45 minutes speaking with Mr. Prospect. However as a consultant, and someone who genuinely wants to help someone, I can only hope that he heeds my advice, reads the material I have provided on our website and reevaluates his objectives and his budget.

What is surely the case is this many of our existing clients came to Optimum7 after a similar experience that it looks like Mr. Prospect is about to have. Those that do the research and really get the facts about Search Engine Marketing such as is contained on our website can eliminate this costly and painful step.
Optimum7.com is an Internet Marketing Services Company with primary focus on Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises (SMEÕs). Optimum7.com offers a rich consultative approach that our clients find refreshing. We actually listen to our clients to learn exactly what their problems and objectives are. Through a proven process, we collaborate with our clients to truly understand where they are and where they want to be next month, next year, and in 5 years. Search Engine Marketing - Buyer Beware.