THE BACK STORY
Many of the SEO firms or Search Engine Optimization companies that focused solely on rankings through unethical methods like spamming are now gone. Google has done a great job of pushing the “shortcutters” to the sideline, forcing them to watch the game rather than play. After the Penguin update, many of the spammers found themselves with nothing – a deserved result for those who cheat the system. Any criminal knows you can only outrun the law for so long. Not that I mind a thinning of the heard so the rest of us can have more customers and better businesses moving forward, but it begins to tarnish the whole industry when potential clients have to be so careful not to end up in another quick fix scam.
The sad thing is, there are still many firms that keep trying to go the route that gets a site blacklisted. I can’t begin to count the number of request we still get on this site to post spam through blog comments back to irrelevant content.
MY SUGGESTION
In light of that, I want to throw out a challenge to web developers and site administrators reading this: if you are not running a restricted comments or feedback section on your blog site, then please (for everyone’s sake) you need to get with it and keep up with the times. If you think about it, you are the only hope these spammers have left and your lack of resistriction on your site is what keeps them continuing in their old ways. So, monitor your comments before they post. It’s easy to tell a genuine comment from a spam link. Do everyone the favor and contribute to a better system.
Now don’t misinterpret here… there are a growing number of firms learning to step up to the best ways to do things as they take the time to do their research and have transitioned to doing what is SEO business the right way by “following the rules.” I know some in the industry have been doing their due diligence in the web marketing game for a long time and my hat goes off to your ongoing efforts to offer solid, responsible service to your clients. White hat techniques are always the way to go!
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
Bottom line here is this: like many things in life, if something seems too good to be true, then it is too good to be true. There are proven ways to provide clients a solid marketing package and simply getting a company’s site ranked really has never been a good plan of attack. Similar to many other markets, the well-rounded approach is always more succesful. This includes adding various facets such as:
- optimizing a website so it is free of canonical and linking errors
- adding continual updates to quality content
- developing social media and networking pieces
- updating and submitting sitemaps and quality in-niche backlinks to leaders in your or your customer’s industry
There are certainly other important methods that will help to broaden the scope of a client’s marketing portfolio, which are outlined in other blog posts of mine. Go back and check them out for a more in depth view on the topic…because asking “What is SEO business?” isn’t enough. We have to start asking, “What should SEO business really look like?”
