Testing the value of SEO firms

Are you thinking about hiring an SEO firm?

It's a big step and unfortunately there are enough charlatans out there that it can be risky. The risk is more than just wasting your money on useless advice; some advice can actually harm you and decrease both visitors and income. You can actually get punished by Google if you follow some of the worst practices you might be advised to do. Other search engines always pay attention to Google's opinion, so even if they don't notice your transgression themselves, you an still lose position with them.

On the other hand, SEO is confusing and there really is a lot to know. A true professional could provide invaluable guidance that really could move you up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Position) and improve the Internet side of your business.

Some Background

I just started here at HubPages in May of 2010, but my main site began in 1997 and I had a simpler site several years prior.

I have many thousands of posts at that primary site. Some are written by guests, but most are mine. Out of all those, a page full show noticeable income in Google Analytics.

Oh, it adds up and there are many more that throw pennies or even a dollar or two into the pot every month, so I'm not crying poor mouth. But so many thousands are of no monetary value at all.

Realize that I'm speaking of Adsense income here, but I also get consulting opportunities because of articles I have written. Although what immediately follows concentrates on Adsense somewhat, you should understand that simple business opportunities also come from web activity.

Which 100 posts?

Some people apparently can write 100 posts and make good money. Me too, but I didn't know which hundred to write so I had to churn out thousands. It's the ten thousand monkey approach to SEO - throw out enough words and you'll match somebody's search.

But now that I have those hundred to go by, all I need to do is lather, rinse, repeat, right? I wish. Whatever made those posts click is beyond my ken.

I started with Adsense in 2003. Almost immediately I started trying to understand why X made money and Y flopped when they seemed very similar to me. I have bought books, perused forums and SEO sites, even paid for advice. I still do not know and honestly I'm beginning to believe that if there are people who do know, they aren't talking. Why would they?

Sure, some subjects are worth more than others and keyword research can help. But there is magic here and some bricks float when they should sink and some balloons that should soar do not. If there is an Internet success formula, it has some big undefined variables in it.

The Quest

I mentioned that I have paid for SEO advice. I did that in the interest of investigation for my readers and for my own knowledge. What I did was solicit an initial consultation from a number of firms advertising SEO or Adsense consulting.

Sometimes that was free, sometimes it was not. If the initial charge was $100 or less, I bought it. There were a few that wanted much more; I passed on those. I gave them all complete information about my site and awaited their call or email.

The Results

The results were disappointing; most of the "experts" were not expert at all. Some obviously didn't even understand CSS or table alignment - one insisted that Google "sees" a page exactly as you see it on the screen. Even after I had him view source on my page, I still don't think he understood.

Some were shady practitioners, advising black hat methods. Laughably, some advised things that passed out of usefulness many years back (invisible text, comment stuffing, cloaking, link farms).

The most surprising thing to me was that so many plainly didn't investigate a thing about my site prior to our initial consultation. They plainly didn't even bother to read the background information I provided. One started off with a promise that he would have me on the first page of Google for the search term "Sco Unix". Apparently he'd read my site enough to know that there are many articles touching that subject, but he never tried Googling it. Had he done that, he would have known that I was already on page one for that and many related terms.

Or maybe he did know it and thought I might not. That would have been an easy promise to meet, wouldn't it?

Another started off by telling me a long tale about how he had moved many a client from insignificance at Alexa to positions in the top few hundred thousand. As my site typically floats around 40,000 at Alexa, he wasn't impressing me - but on he droned, because he never checked.

But most were not that bad. They were competent, and one even spotted an obscure mistake I had made. But competent is not expert and almost all of the advice I heard is repeated a million times over at freely available sites,

The biggest push was for rewriting content. Again, we ran into absurdity there. One firm wanted to rewrite a page that already enjoys slot one or two on page one for every reasonable related search term. How could his pricey rewrite improve on that? Wouldn't you think he would have checked a few of the terms when he picked that page as his target? Nope.

Some wanted a monthly retainer. For what? For submitting my new posts to search engines. But I do that with a Google Sitemap, I'd protest. Two "experts" had no idea what I meant. I would hope that the others at least blushed.

Some offered to regularly report on positioning for certain keywords and to check for broken links; I guess they hadn't heard of Google's Webmaster Tools. At that time, I hadn't either, but I learned about it soon after.

It wasn't all bad

I did have some pleasant and intelligent conversations, but nothing where I felt the person at the other end of the phone knew much more than I did. The bright ones stressed content and organic links. They offered to do the leg work of seeking out possible link sources, but cheerfully agreed that this is just drudge work; there is little skill involved and most people could easily do it themselves. The honest ones told me without being prompted that the ways of Google are inscrutable and in constant flux and that even those who study the beast very closely can disagree about the fine points of its diet.

All in all, none of this gave me warm fuzzies. I'd suggest that the honest ones would do a decent job for someone lacking the time or ambition to educate themselves for free. But how would you know if you had no knowledge to compare them to? That's a tough question.

Interestingly, not one of the firms I talked to recommended self-created backlinks, link wheels or using social networking. Those subjects just did not come up - I found that very odd.

I didn't engage any of them for future SEO campaign work. I just could not see the value. Had I engaged the expensive firms I might have enjoyed different results, but I couldn't bite that big a bullet on blind faith.

Your mileage may vary, of course, and I would love to hear of any successful engagement you may have made.