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SEO Consultants Convert Sherpa SEO Buying Guide into Laughter
October 18, 2005
I'm going to talk about picking the right SEO consultant one more time, then I promise to let it go, for now at least.
A thread at Search Engine Watch called Reputable SEO Companies popped up about a week ago, just as I was talking about the same thing. A lot of the information in that thread echoes the caveat emptor philosophy, illustrating points like those that Todd Malicoat has mentioned in the past.
A recurring recommendation from the thread is to purchase the Marketing Sherpa Buyer's Guide to Search Engine Optimization Firms. We agree. It's a great publication, and it's well worth the small cost if you're looking for an island in a sea of confusion.
With a great deal of help, I've put together Intrapromote's Sherpa Guide application materials for the past several years. Their editors always boast that filling in the online questionnaire takes "about 45 minutes," but that's utter nonsense. To do it well takes the better part of a day, and I believe that prospective clients of all SEO companies benefit from that labor.
Each year we look very closely at the questions that Marketing Sherpa asks SEO companies, because the way various companies answer the questions makes up the core differentiation between them. That way, if you're looking for a very aggressive company that offers cloaking and doorway pages, or one that will not, it's easy to find.
So this year, as I filled out the application and looked through the questions about our methodologies and reporting capabilities, I stopped at the section that asked if we were able to report on the clicks, traffic, and conversions of our clients' competitors.
With the Alexa Toolbar or some other extrapolating tool, you could argue that you have a rough estimate of the traffic of a competing site. (You may not be right, but you could argue it.)
But competitors' conversions? Surely that's a joke - a tripwire carefully laid out by the ornery Sherpa editors to catch SEOs who aren't paying attention, and simply check every box they see. Right?
The stunning fact is that of the 126 SEO firms in the Buyers Guide to Search Engine Optimization Companies, 18 claimed the ability to offer clients a report of their competitors' conversions. Let me rephrase that. Nearly 15% of the surveyed SEO companies claim to be able to give you information about your competitors that can come only from the competitors' web analytics and ROI tracking software.
Forget white hat or black hat. If they can legally show competitors' conversions, that's a Technicolor Dream Hat.
But they can't.
see all posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at October 18, 2005 11:54 PM
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