One of the things that’s always bothered me about the SEO industry is how just about anyone can claim to be an SEO specialist, and offer search engine optimisation services to unsuspecting clients regardless of their actual knowledge of the industry.
The people that do this, without any real knowledge of SEO, tend to be web designers (or sorts) who have realised that their clients now want SEO and, rather than pass them on to a credible SEO agency, claim to be able to do it themselves. They’ll often charge a flat rate for one off work too, because, let’s face it, they don’t really know what they’re doing anyway so what difference does it make how they do it?
Whether you’re a plumber in Cheshire or a national accounting firm, whether you’re going after geographical keywords or generic keywords, they charge the same… because they have little or no idea of how to rank a website anyway, why the heck not?
I was looking at one website this last week and noticed they’d had SEO done (kind of) but there were a few, shall we say, glaring errors. It was apparent that whoever had performed the SEO wasn’t an expert in their field, and had more likely cribbed off some notes from a blog or forum before attempting the work. For example, they’d even spelt the word ‘Stockport’ wrong in the client’s Title tag!
So, I looked at the website for the company responsible and found that they were in fact a rather well known design agency in Chester… a design agency also offering ‘SEO services’; well, who doesn’t these days?
A quick look through their site and I could see just how they’d have made a mistake with the client’s website; their blog didn’t even feature a Title tag… on ANY of the pages. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of SEO will tell you about the importance of a Title tag, yet this SEO company didn’t even have one, on any of the blog’s pages. The Title tag was blank…
I presume this was an oversight; perhaps someone was updating the template and forgot to put the Title tag generator back in? Whatever the reason, it wasn’t checked and the rankings of the website will be affected as a result; just like any website’s Google rankings would be affected if similar errors were made while optimising a website.
When you let someone loose on your website for SEO, make sure they know what they’re doing.
Oh, did you want to know who the SEO company in question is? Sorry; I’m not tipping them off 😉
See, I’ve grown as a person.
Darren Jamieson, aka MrDaz, is the Technical Director and co-founder of Engage Web and has been working online in a career spanning two decades. His first website was built in 1998 and is still live today.
ROOODEEEEEEEEE hahahaha 🙂