I know this sounds like a silly question but over the last 6 months I’ve seen more and more people in forums and social media sites give people advice which is just plain wrong!

I personally believe that webmasters who know very little or nothing of what seo is are picking up bits of advice from various blog sources and suddenly believing that they know seo. I’ve worked with seo for just over 2 years now so I know I’m no “Guru” but I understand the basics well and my day job is seo for a digital marketing agency in London. I understand that there are hundreds of factors to take into account when developing seo for a website, its not a case of creating 100 strong PR 7 links and waiting for the cash to come in, it takes time and effort.

I feel very strongly when I see “seo” companies selling strategies for £5000 + and in the list of “services” you see “1000 search engine submissions” – alarm bells should be ringing when they have set prices people! A small list below just to look out for when considering creating an seo campaign.

1. The company guarantees a top Google position – this is impossible to guarantee before you even know what the keyword is.
2. A full site analysis – This comes standard, someone that advertises this is obviously trying to fill up a list.
3. No mention of site architecture – site architecture is very important in seo, you don’t want to stop those spiders moving around your site do you?
4. The company says it will only take 30 - 60 days – listen folks seo demands a continuous strategy to be effective, you should have an on going plan and budget set aside.
5. They promise you 5000 links instantly – this is a sure way to get banned from Google, don’t do it, it won’t help you SERPS anyway.
6. They don’t ask for access to your server – they should be looking at the code and source files and be installing some kind of analytics program to monitor traffic.
7. They don’t know what web 2.0 is – if they don’t know what web 2.0 is then move on quickly!
8. They think Google is the only search engine to use – I hear this so many times these days and although I do believe it’s one of the best ways to find out queries its by no means the only search engine that will provide you with good quality traffic – broaden the mind!
9. When “experts” on forums just dismiss your ideas – if you post something you believe to be true, a good seo worker will investigate, test and comment. If you see a so called “expert” putting down everyone’s ideas without consideration they obviously don’t understand that seo is constantly changing and that they will die in this industry.
10. They believe page rank is important in rankings – this is inaccurate, page rank is useful when selling links but in terms of SERP positions it really doesn’t matter.

Well I feel like I’ve had a good rant about this, I could go on forever but I’ll keep it short, well ish anyway!