Just found the Yahoo Live Badge. I don’t have too much to say about this except, who in their right mind would put something like this on a public professional site. It looks cheap, and I don’t think visitors to your site need to know how many back links you have. Wonder how many developer hours were used in building and testing a worthless tool like this?

With new knowledge of SEO and web technologies over the last few years, I find web advertising and marketing a must in the world today. But some people have an opposite view of this critical business facet. After looking in forums today I found a link to a site. I will not add a direct link as I do not want to support his cause in leading people astray as to the importance of web marketing. But here is the text version: www dot warringtonwebworks dot com/112/seo-mind-crime/ I would just like to comment on some points on the obvious lack of common sense and SEO understanding. At one point he says:

“…are wondering how to get more traffic to their websites and achieve that holy grail of a top ten position on Google.”

Of course it’s the holy grail, with millions (if not billions) searching Google, and 60% of searchers choosing the top organic result businesses have every right to want to be at the top.

“She was approached by an SEO firm which guaranteed a top ten position on Google for three years!!”

Just a note, stay away from any company that makes guarantees about Google. The algorithm this engine is based on is so complex that Google probably has a hard time ranking in their own engine.

“She then pointed out that the SEO Company wanted £15,000 (US$29,000) for this work.”

Hmmm, is this really that much? $30,000 for three years. Let’s break that down. That’s $10,000 a year, or $833.33 a month. Lets say an SEO expert charges by the hour at a rate of $40/hr (this is cheap) her business will get 21 hours of SEO work done per month, or two and half days. So you can see this is not such a bad deal if the company did not make claims of guaranteeing such high results and if they were legit.

“She should not be considering search engines as the only way to get traffic to her site.”

No she shouldn’t but she should not ignore it either!

“£15,000($30,000) is my entire budget on websites for the next 40 years.”

So if this were true his budget is right around $62.50 per month. Seems like he either is paying way too much for his hosting or he is paying for some sort or web advertising. Isn’t this contradictory to the entire article?

“I want to do a live test now with you the reader, just for some fun and your education. Over the next couple of days go to Google and search for SEO Mind Crime.”

Come on! Why don’t you try it for an actual competitive keyword? Like I said in my comments, this article is a joke. I have done SEO work for different companies and have seen great improvements in sales and brand recognition, to say that SEO is a complete waste of time is like telling your client that marketing and advertising is a complete waste of time. Understand it is not the ONLY avenue of advertising, but with more people searching by the day, it is very important.

As a business with web sites, I have started to get calls from SEO companies. Before I tell you of my experience yesterday I want you to know I am active in a few SEO forums, and do all my SEO in-house. I am ranking on the first page on Google for a lot of terms. So I am no newbie to SEO.

Well, yesterday I received a call from a company called SEOP. He first started off by telling me what SEO stands for. Then he asked if we were happy with our ranking. I did the wrong thing at that point and told him no, and that I am always working on my rankings as it is my job. He then asked me to go to Google and type in some keywords. Then he gave me the word of ‘bank’ and explained that Bank of America was their client and they got them to the #1 spot, doubtful(a company that big is not hiring someone to submit to directories for them as they have 95,000 back links), but I humored him. Then he gave me a great keyword ’spine surgeon’. That’s when he told me that he got the top listing in their position. I proceeded to laugh at him at that point and told him to give me a real competitive keyword to search for. He couldn’t think of any so I asked him if I could find his site under the first 10 pages for Google for the keyword ’seo’. It was not there! How about that!

Remember that there are over 300,000,000 results for ‘bank’ and could supposedly rank them first, but ’seo’ returned just over 100,000,000 and they were not in the first 100 results.

I have come to regard these companies as “SEO Telemarketers”. They promise the world, but have not a leg to stand on. In the end he was transferring me to a “senior technician” but after being on hold for more than I minute, I had all the fun I could handle and hung up.