Why it’s so difficult to find good SEO services

05/07/2007

It can be a daunting task trying to find a good SEO service provider. Our many prospects and customers clearly struggle with trying to interpret what they really need to do in order to attract quality traffic to their site, and who is capable of taking them there. So I thought I would briefly share some thoughts about why it’s so difficult to find a good SEO service (or you can look at it as why it’s so easy to find a bad SEO service).

Many who are truly skilled at SEO simply create their own affiliate sites and promote them, thus reaping the full benefits of their skill themselves. The ability to draw quality traffic to a site is truly a rare one. It takes time. Often the greater long term payoff for a skilled SEO service provider is to simply create their own site and optimize for it. Many good Search Engine Marketers (SEMs) often have dozens of sites they are promoting and collecting affiliate fees from.
Because of the complexity of SEO Services it is difficult to measure previous success. It is easy for someone not very skilled to offer 10 ten rankings for little searched keywords. The real results should be in the most desired outcome, such as sales.
Shopping for SEO Services is not like shopping for other services. Guarantees are nearly worthless in SEO. Anyone guaranteeing certain results is likely setting the bar pretty low in order to achieve them. The only guarantee a good SEO company will offer is the guarantee to do their best to help you achieve your goals. After all, the industry is by its very nature competitive. How many competitors do you have? Each one that is investing in SEO/SEM is competition.
Results are often delayed. A good search engine marketing strategy takes time, and needs to be adaptive. Often you won’t see the results for a particular strategy for many months. It takes good planning, skill and experience to be able to anticipate and react accordingly.
The more customers an SEO service has, the more likely they are to have customers competing against one another. How can a successful SEO company possibly optimize for the same keywords for multiple customers and provide each with the highest level of service possible to both? It’s a difficult situation for a SEO services provider to deal with.

So what should you look for? The best advice I can offer is to pay careful attention to their processes and their dealings with you. If they are just trying to sell you a commodity just like any other customer, then you might want to think twice. If they truly pay attention to your needs and get to understand the best way to help you achieve your goals, and you have a good feeling about them, then you are likely dealing with a good SEO services provider. If you have any suspicions at all, you should continue to ask questions until you feel comfortable, or come to the point where you realize it’s not worth your risk.

Remember that anything worth having takes effort. Promoting your website is no different. Understand that it will take effort by you to find the right SEO services for your site, and that it will take time and effort by them to achieve results. Anyone promising anything that sounds too good to be true, probably is. Caveat emptor.