[wesleytodd]

Agreed that you should have your lawyer contact them with a threatening email. Also, you could have a friend "hire" them for some small service just to get their information. Then provide that to your lawyer to pursue more substantial legal measures.

<rant> My experience with SEO companies has been horrible.

I worked for one for a month, have worked with them in the past at agencies I have worked at, and was given a list of "optimizations" from one a the startup I currently work for.

My experience while working for one is, by far, the worst. The owner/CEO asked me to lie to a customer and tell them I did work that he had actually outsourced to India. "In the future, try to funnel these things through you. Instead of saying, 'I will pass that on to the developer', say, 'I will take care of that'".

I feel like their skills are hard to quantify, and because of this a lot of people get sucked in on questionable sales pitches. This market then seems to draw the "Snake Oil" type salesmen who find they can get easy money.

Although there are good people offering quality SEO services, I have had 100% bad experiences with them. </rant>

[BrainInAJar]

SEO, as an industry, is shysters. Even "good" SEO is still a service designed to break search engines. A scummy industry is going to attract scummy people, it just becomes a question of to what degree they are scummy.

[sharkweek]

No, good SEO is designing a page that is perfectly crawlable by bots (this is still difficult for most people, especially for larger websites and people who aren't familiar with webmaster best practices), and researching/creating/promoting relevant content to attract links.

There are of course shady people in the SEO world, but most of the "one cool trick to help you rank better" tactics are long gone as Google has done a pretty good job squashing those through algo updates.

Saying "SEO is still a service to break search engines" is incredibly misguided - Organic search is a ridiculously powerful growth opportunity for brands as ranking #1 for proper keywords can be a multimillion dollar marketing value add. To sell that short is incredibly foolish, and every brand worth their weight should truly believe they deserve to rank #1 for relevant terms, why not work to achieve this?

[toolz]

research/creating/promoting don't really fall under an SEO title. If search engine optimization is broadly defined enough to where content creation is considered SEO, then basically everyone with a website is an SEOer.

[sharkweek]

Content marketing is certainly rooted in SEO though, with the often-existing explicit intention of having a relevant piece of content rank well for informational queries. Or at least having this content designed to attract links, which are still a major part of the ranking equation.

The lines are definitely blurring, so the main thing I'm arguing is that SEO should be in every marketer's tool belt, it's not some black hat wizardry anymore.

[toolz]

Everything on the internet is rooted in SEO, by design. Google has the intent that truly fascinating things be given the most visibility on the internet, that has nothing to do with studying up how to appear at the top of google's list and everything to do with studying how to be fascinating to people on the internet.

[ssharp]

SEO is constantly evolving. Table stakes is a website that is easily indexed. SEO strategy is currently focused largely on creating and promoting content.

[mod]

I previously worked for a small design/development shop that ended up doing a ton of SEO work and eventually pivoted to selling those ongoing services as a large part of what they did.

It was in no way scummy, nor intended to break search engines.

Our approach to SEO was, in a nutshell: "write quality blog articles relevant to related search terms, include a CTA at the end."

We posted lots and lots of articles. We started ranking very well for long-tail keywords, which we should have--we had the best content available for them.

Nothing scummy about that.

[dropit_sphere]

https://xkcd.com/810/

[mod]

Touche.

Paid well, at least.

[wesleytodd]

@sharkweek The problem here is that SEO companies are usually not equipped to solve those problems. Their developers are usually secondary roles in the company, and might even be second-rate themselves.

Also, good/real SEO usually requires content writers. Which is an ongoing process, and is probably not worth the cost to most small businesses.

[sharkweek]

I should clarify by saying I wouldn't bother hiring an SEO agency anymore - definitely not worth their billable rates. BUT, if I were a smaller company growing a marketing team I would definitely look for someone with a legitimate understanding of this as a marketing tactic, it's getting better but it is still the wild west in a lot of ways as well, so at least being able to monitor and interpret what is going on is ridiculously important. And if I'm a bigger company, I would hire at least two strict SEOs, one technical, one content.

[wesleytodd]

Yeah, that is probably a good suggestions. But in relation to a small doctors office as in the OP's case, probably not worth doing anything beyond getting a decent front-end developer to make a brochure site.

[iharris]

Totally agree with you. In the case of this clinic, they get almost all of their referrals by word-of-mouth these days. However, they've noted that the new generation of twentysomethings will generally do their homework on Google before calling in. Might be useful for the clinic to prepare for the eventual shift to millennials as their primary clientele.

With that said, most of the SEO companies that cold-call them are quite shady. Other clinics in the city have had their search rankings drop after hiring SEO services who use scummy tactics. The new "snake oil" perhaps?

[normloman]

If all they do is write interesting content and promote it, why do we call it SEO? Last time I checked, that matches the job description of public relations writer.

[freebs]

You can make 100 landing pages with interesting content on them, but if they are using words that people don't use when searching, they are less likely to be surfaced at the top of the results.

Those pages can be scattered across the site architect and have improper linking. They can have improper titles, meta descriptions, and image alt tags. Often times writers can't grasp these things, or they are so overworked with pumping out content that they simply don't have the time for them.

SEOs can be more technical, and can also make changes across a large site or networks of sites. EG: Missing the city and state from the h1 of every vehicle landing page for hundreds or thousands of vehicles on a thousand dealership sites can have a dramatic impact.

In this sense many SEOs also have the skills to be what we now call Content Strategists. People that do research, plan, and keep the content teams moving in the right direction.

[stan_rogers]

It goes a little beyond content writing. At a certain level of resolution, SEO (the good stuff) and accessibility become nearly indistinguishable as well. So yes, there is a sense in which "real" SEO is merely a matter of writing web pages that give your users what they want with optimal markup, and SEO is probably a bad name for it - except that the people who need it are usually going to be searching for ways of getting good search results rather than advice on how to build more informative, accessible web pages.

[normloman]

I worked as an SEO for years. Quit because of this. "Good" SEO is about good content, good coding, and good usability. But in order to do that, you need great designers and writers. SEO people tended to be neither. My colleagues got into the industry by keyword stuffing and link farming. They were trying, unsuccessfully, to change their specialty after updates to Google's algorithm. We helped sites get ranked, but most of our clients would see a better return on investment hiring designers and writers.

You touched on the other issue: Even if all you do is write and design, by calling yourself SEO, you're attracting clients narrowly focused on their search ranking. That's the metric they're going to judge your performance on, and it won't matter how accessible you make their site if they don't get the #1 spot for "cosmetic dentistry allentown pa." So by selling SEO, you miss an opportunity to educate clients on creating a memorable user experience.

[smsm42]

There is a place for a good SEO - as not every tax preparer should be cheating on taxes, not every SEO should be using greyhat and blackhat tactics. Some are legitimately helping people to organize their info to be searchable - and most laymen have zero idea what is searchable and what is not - in fact, many professionals don't either. Of course, a couple of rotten apples can spoil everything, and I have no data about the percentage of rotten apples in SEO now - anybody has something better than personal anecdotes?

[codexon]

Saying SEO is a service designed to break search engines makes the false assumption that search engines are perfect.

I've seen many instances where Google failed to place the best site at the top and there was no evidence the top site used any SEO.

[jsonne]

That sucks. I jumped from the world of tech into starting my own agency. There seems to be a lot of crappy agencies and firms out there that use questionable tactics to get the job done faster and for cheaper rather than correctly. I think it stems from not wanting to leave any money on the table. Rather than only taking clients that are a good fit culturally or have realistic goals, they take everyone. When you take everyone it pretty quickly turns into a race to the bottom and you end up with shoddy work.

[wesleytodd]

So true. This is one of the main reasons I am happy to be out of that sector. The #StartUpLife, despite the stress, is much more fun.

[jsonne]

For sure. There's ups and downs to both worlds. I get bored easily, so the ability to jump from project to project while having the same job is something I really like. As many bad agencies there are out there, there's some good ones too.

[api]

I've found a lot of this beyond just SEO and into the realm of almost anything that claims to help you with your business or with marketing. Seems to be a market that like you say is hard to quantify and draws a lot of questionable huckster types.