I’ve written quite a few times about SEO companies and consultants that would either liemade fun of them and I tried to get a list of things to look out for when choosing an SEO. Nevertheless … fun does not stop and thanks to industry leaders, anyone who reads these articles can learn things to look out for when choosing an SEO company. or mislead online companies to get business. I

One of these leaders is Jill Whalen who wrote a very good article titled “10 signs that your SEO is a Quack“. Even though this is a quality article, I did have few “arguments and comments” and thus decided to post them here for you. Below is a shortened summary / recap of what Jill wrote (I suggest you read her entire article). To the list I’ve also added 5 more things to look out for when choosing an SEO provider.

In BOLD are my own comments.

1. Your SEO company talks about PageRank (that green bar) and meta tags as if they are the “magic bullet” of SEO. Keyword meta tags are completely worthless and that green bar should not be an indicator of a quality link.

(IGOR) PageRank is not as important as it was before, however there is an indication of quality between a site that has a page rank of 7 vs. a page rank 2 site. It’s funny how sometimes you can see a PR 2 site outrank a PR 5 or 6 site. The correct term for page rank I believe is “green dust”.

2. The SEO’s own website or their client’s websites use the same Title tag on all of their pages.

(IGOR) If you see this, it’s a clear indicator that this “SEO” is not just a B.S. artist but pretty much has no clue of what he/she is doing.

3. SEO company only focuses on the “long tail” keywords. Even though this is a good strategy they should not avoid popular and relevant keywords that bring that heavy traffic.

(IGOR) I once had an SEO consultant give me a guarantee that out of our 60 keywords, 10 will rank in top 10 on Google. A child who looked over the shoulder of an SEO person could deliver that (in most cases where keywords are targeting “long tail”).

4. The SEO company tells you that it’s all about links or just content. SEO is never ALL about anything. There are many things involved and one can not only stress on one particular strategy. Right on!

5. SEO consultant suggests launching a massive link campaign even though your site already has quality links and with time achieved that “authority” status within the industry. Just because an SEO loves to sell links, don’t be fooled by this strategy.

6. Your SEO company is promising results within the next few months for your brand new website. If they are guaranteeing you these results they are either inexperienced or simply lying to you. Google has an aging delay (sandbox) that is related to the age of the site. If the site is new, Google will be cautious in ranking the site higher and wait for incoming links to age.

(IGOR) Even though I believe in the “sandbox” effect and have experienced it with few sites, I believe that with the right Public Relations, media coverage, online PR and high quality links, a new site can avoid the “sandbox” and be ranked in top 10 within days.

If Google would have the same policy for all in sandboxing a new site for 9 months it would be called encyclopedia. It’s quite possible and natural for a new site to get a massive amount of links in a short period of time (launch of a new product, news event site, etc). Google does not treat every site equal. Imagine if Google would hide these news related sites and only show them 8 months later???

7. The SEO company says nothing about your website architecture and suggest no change for it in order to have more important pages be easily accessible by users and search engine spiders.

(IGOR) This is a clear red flag. You may be very good in creating site architectures but if you have a need to hire an SEO and they have absolutely no suggestions on your site architecture, I might rethink that contract.

8. They can’t provide you with any reference from previous jobs they’ve done. They have absolutely no one to give a good word about them.

(IGOR) This one is a bit tricky. Many SEO companies are not permitted to share their client’s info with others and thus they suffer a bit. I do however believe that if you do a great job for a client, you might get a permission to at least refer to their URL. My suggestion is …. for credibility, just Google them!

9. SEO company is telling you that you HAVE TO HAVE a website listing in the DMOZ directory for higher rankings.

(IGOR) I don’t even bother with DMOZ. Yahoo directory is a little plus when trying to achieve better rankings in Yahoo. DMOZ on the other hand is not on my priority list.

10. They promise high rankings in less popular search engines such as Altavista, Fast, Lycos, etc. ……..

(IGOR) Good luck running a business relying on traffic from AltaVista and Fast.

Ok ……… this is a pretty good list but I’ve decided to add a few more “Signs” that your SEO consultant or company is a “B.S. artist”. (I call it like it is).

11. Provides pricing and takes on a project without doing any research on the industry (competition, field, demographics, etc.) I personally would appreciate an SEO provider asking questions about the business, competition and industry before promising anything or accepting to do the job. To me it shows how responsible this provider is.

12. Shows you pictures of him/her and some Search engine engineer together, thus suggesting that he holds some “extra” knowledge. Engineers from Google, Yahoo, MSN or ASK will not be sharing information that is not available to the public. Don’t believe the “we’re friends with them” line.

13. They suggest submitting your site to 200+ search engines and 5,000+ directories. If you hear this … start running, preferable away from the consultant.

14. Little or no attention is given to PR & Social Media. Both of these are a huge play towards higher rankings as well as more traffic. An SEO company that is only focused on links and on-page text is not providing you with the full benefit of an SEO project.

15. They tell you that the reason why their own website is not in the top 50 pages for its keywords is because …. get ready …. they don’t want their competitors to see some of the “great” techniques they have uncovered for higher rankings with search engines.

Additional signs from David Temple

16. SEO company tells you they’ve hired a former engineer who knows the algorithm

17. SEO company says we don’t have to touch your site we do it all on our servers

18. SEO company says we spend a lot on CPC advertising so Google gives us special considerations on organic search

19. SEO company says we have 1,000s of links already set up for you

Aditional signs from Christian

20. We have a bunch of great pre-written content that’s perfect for your site!

21. I suggest you use *default keyword* as much as possible. don’t worry about using it too much,…the search engines like keywords.

Additional Signs from Shimon Sandler

22. The “SEO Consultant� wants to place a script on your website.

Feel free to add more bullets in the comments area. If they are good (true), I will add them and place a link to your site.