During your search for a good SEO company, you may have encoutnered someone who referred to themselves as an “SEO Guru” (Search engine optimisation gurus). They may have flashed fancy acronyms in your face, called themselves gurus, promised you the #1 spot in Google, and offered to work at the low, low price of $300 a month (which is extremely cheap for SEO). There’s only one problem: this SEO “Guru” is a fraud.
SEO Guru Sign #1: Use of Pretentious Titles
It’s fine if you call yourself a CEO if you have a board of directors. It’s also okay for you to refer to yourself as President if you were appointed by your company. It’s another thing to call yourself a God of SEO, Guru, or a CEO of nothing. If other people refer to you as a SEO guru, then it’s acceptable. However, using such a pretentious title is often a trick used by frauds to lure unsuspecting clients into their trap. Someone who truly understands SEO will demonstrate their knowledge through their work or advice, not through unearned titles.
Common Titles Used By SEO Gurus:
- God of SEO
- CEO
- Anything else that seems
SEO Guru Sign #2: Guarantees
If there is one thing I never do to my clients, it’s guarantee the top spot on Google. This is something an SEO Guru does to lure people into giving them money. The reason that this cannot be guaranteed is because Google is constantly updating its search engine results pages (SERPs), so even if the SEO Guru did manage to quickly get you to the #1 position, it wouldn’t last and this would more than likely have been achieved through black hat methods which can also get your website penalised by Google.
SEO Guru Sign #3: Low Prices
In one of my now removed articles, I mentioned that low prices are often a sign of a shoddy SEO company. I’ve posted an excerpt of the part where I mention low prices below:
Many businesses may look for the cheapest options and then assume that the cheapest SEO company is the best SEO company, only to be left sorely disappointed with the quality of service that they had received. What they should know is that ordering from SEO companies that charges under $750 a month for a full package SEO service (this includes on page SEO, off-page SEO, social media account setup/management, reports, and more) is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Not only is the SEO ineffective, but you may find yourself spending more money later on to hire someone to clean up the mistakes of the cheap SEO company. In addition to that, low-quality SEO services can be detrimental to your website and to your entire business! Sure, the SEO offered by these companies may seem cheap now, but they won’t seem so cheap when you find yourself ordering from 100 of these companies and you’re left with a penalised website. This is why it is important that when you are looking for the best SEO company, you will want to choose one that works not only with your website, but one that works with you.
SEO Guru Sign #4: Their Own Website Doesn’t Rank For Any Keywords
It’s one thing if their website isn’t the most popular website on the Internet, it’s another thing if their website is so obscure that they doesn’t even appear in the SERPs. This is a sign that their website is either new or has been penalised by Google due to black hat methods being employed on their website, so unless you want your website to meet the same fate as their website, it’s best to avoid the SEO guru.
SEO Guru Sign #5: Lack of Reports
Again, as I mentioned in my article titled, “How To Choose The Best SEO Company”, a good SEO company will send you a weekly report that details all of the changes that have been made to your website (so that in the event that something happens to your website, you can always go back and reverse the changes). If you are not receiving any reports, this could mean your SEO Guru is either not doing any work or doing work that they do not want you to know about.
SEO Guru Sign #6: Use of Internet Marketing Lingo
You may have noticed that I frequently elongate acronyms that are frequently used on Internet marketing forums (SERP, PPC, SEO). This is because I want my readers (that’s you) to understand what I am saying and learn about Internet marketing. When an SEO Guru superfluously flashes fancy acronyms in their reports (assuming they even give you a report) without making the report readable for their client (who more than likely doesn’t understand SEO), this could mean they have something to hide.
SEO Guru Sign #7: Failing To Respond To Your Emails
If your “SEO Guru” isn’t responding to you in a professional manner (or at all) about important questions you may have, it’s best that you find someone else who actually cares about their clients.
SEO Guru Sign #8: Irrelevant Link Building
Building links for the purpose of manipulating your position in the SERPs is against Google’s TOS (Google refers to this as a link scheme). However, building irrelevant links is a sure-fire way to get your website penalised (this is often a tactic used in Churn and Burn SEO projects).
SEO Guru Sign #9: They Do Not Know Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
If you’re looking to have a long term website, it would probably be best that you work with an SEO consultant or agency that understands the Google Webmaster Guidelines. If your SEO Guru doesn’t understand even the fundamentals concepts of these guidelines, then turn in the other direction and don’t look back.
SEO Guru Sign #10: Fluff In Their Contract
So you’re telling me that your SEO Guru will optimise your tags and give you 10 h1, h2, and h3 tags‽ Fluff, all of it! This is all a part of on-page optimisation. For example, in my own SEO contract, I simply refer to keyword optimisation, tag optimisation, and other on-page SEO as “Website Optimisation”. Separating all of these features is just an endeavour that an SEO Guru would make to make it seem like you’re getting more for less.