I read an amusing magazine article that the boss of a rival local SEO company had written recently. Before I start, I should mention that this ‘SEO Specialist’ was actually working in a chemical plant in the UK 2 years ago and still maintains a couple of websites selling chemicals online even now. I’m constantly amazed how SEO experts qualify their occupational description…did they strike it lucky with a key phrase on one of their sites and now think they are in the position to advise others? There’s another ‘Specialist’ in our neighbourhood in the very competitive Costa Del Sol area of Southern Spain. This 2nd guy is a builder by day an an SEO expert by night! Seriously. You guys would roll around laughing if I showed you his own attempts at SEO on his template created website on a PR0. Hhhmmm. Maybe it’s me being bitter in my old age.
Anyway, in this article, the guy was basically spelling out to the audience what SEO was and what he considers the benefits over PPC or other forms of online marketing to be. There were some inaccuracies and a level of naivety but nevertheless, he wasn’t too far off the mark for a high level ‘heads up’. The guys argument was based on the fact that ‘it costs you money’ to be at the top of Google et al using a PPC advertising model, but SEO is ‘Free’. He also stated, quite proudly, that his site (which shall remain nameless) never advertises…he claims they don’t need to.
A day or so later, by coincidence, a client of mine (an estate agent) forwarded an email to me from this guy whereby this guy (the one who’d written the article) was offering his SEO Services. The email finished by stating his monthly ‘retainer’…around 100 Euros I think from memory ($125).
Now ok, $125 is not much, but this guy was offering services to a VERY small village community where SERPs were relatively easy to come by on targeted key phrases in all but the most competitive industry there…Real Estate. What the guy failed to realise is that most of the area’s Real Estate agents were using PPC and paying no more than around $150 or so a month in their PPC budget and with an average CPC of say $0.50, they were near enough assured 300 landed clicks, so a potentially good ROI (the area is rural Spain but 80% + buyers are from the UK, Denmark, Germany etc so an Internet presence is a no brainer). The SEO approach obviously guarantees nothing, but for a similar fee.
I’m all for SEO, I do afterall run an SEO and PPC agency, but the naivety of some people never fails to amaze me, neither does the pedigree of so called SEO experts coming out of the woodwork. Oh, I should finish by saying that I was playing around on google this morning and found this guys website listed under the brand term on Google Adwords. If a so called SEO Guru can’t optimise his own site for his own brand term, then what hope is there for his highly generic and competitive client terms and phrases?
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(wb) Russ