Choosing An SEO Company

SEO-Scam-Artist-Exposed

This post was originally written to point out a fellow SEO company. I named names in that post but I thought better and wanted to leave them out of it.

Let’s just say I don’t agree with the tactics. But I don’t want to risk this site or my clients so I’ll leave them out of it.

He stumbled upon our “Who is The Best SEO Company in Vancouver BC” blog post.

At first I thought he was a potential client. But that wasn’t the case at all. He wanted to teach me something about SEO.

Well I’m going to teach him and you something about content marketing and research.

So this is what his email says.

“Graphically speaking is the Best seo in Vancouver? How much did they pay you for that? You need better analyzing skills. I live in Vancouver but I rank #one throughout Canada for “best SEO in Canada”  Hit me up if you want to learn a few SEO tricks that will make you the best in Vancouver. Ranking for once province is easy, try all of Canada.”

I’ll get to exposing the scammer Todd in a minute but there is a lesson in this for you.

To be clear, the blog post he stumbled upon was a content marketing piece with three goals.

#1 – Target The Long Tail

It’s aimed at targeting the long tail search term. Long tail search terms are usually 3 or more words in a term. So “SEO Vancouver” is the short tail. But “Best SEO Company Vancouver” is the long tail.

#2 – Attract Target Visitors

Marcus Sheridan over at the Saleslion.com is someone I look up. He provides practically and easy to follow digital marketing advice. This “Best SEO Company Vancouver” post idea came directly from his blog in a post on 4 Powerful Local SEO and Content Marketing Strategies No One is Talking About.

He applied this strategy for his fiber glass pool company a few years ago and has seen a huge ROI.

As for listing your competitors, people are going to find out who they are anyways. It’s better to control the conversation on your website. After all, these visitors are on your website. If you provide more valuable and useful content for them, the less time they will spend on your competitors.

#3 – Ranking For The Short Tail

I wasn’t sure if it would work but I had read on this SEO blog that a potential result of targeting a long tail search term might help you rank for the short tail search term. The short tail we want to rank for is “SEO Vancouver”.

It did work!

As it turns out, that page is actually ranking quite well for “SEO Vancouver”.

As of today, that blog post has generated a fair bit of traffic, two solid leads and one client. The time spent was 40 minutes.

I really hope that you start to see the value in this content marketing strategy and how little time it takes.

So now that class is over, my attention is to Todd Herman.

Actually, there is another lesson in this. Do your research when you hire a SEO company!

After Todd’s email I was intrigued.

I’m always interested in learning what other SEO’s and marketers are doing. So I wanted to learn more and sent him an email.

But I realized that I could just spy on his website to see how he works!

I was able to find a few links directed to his site. What did I find?

This YouTube video testimonial from a supposed client.

But wait a second! I’ve seen this guy before. Where though?

Oh yeah, Fiverr!

Fiverr is a site full of jobs that people do for $5. I’ve used the site to seek out a personal assistant and found a good one. But I’m always interested to see what things people will do on there. And I remembered seeing this guy.

Vancouver SEO scam artist exposed

Here’s the gig.

One other link I found heading to his site was on a Toronto discussion forum.

Vancouer-SEO-scam-artist

Now I have forum profile links heading back to this website from GolfClubAtlas.com. But they provide no SEO value. Those links are for anyone who might need SEO service that reads the forum. Their not for SEO value.

The worst part is that he just signed up for the discussion forum this month merely to get some low grade links back to his site. The other issue here is the “Best SEO in Toronto” anchor text of that link.

I’ve already seen how Google can penalize your website for having too many keyword rich anchor text links.

This client had SEO work done by another company a few years ago. The work was done by a company that operates by the same SEO principles it seems Todd’s does. Principles that use to work before search engines caught on to spammers like Todd and started implementing new algorithms.

Todd states on his website that he has been doing SEO for over 17 years. Seems like he’s following principles from 17 years ago as well. During that time the search engines have rolled out numerous algo changes.

Did I mention I came across that video after I found out about his negative reviews on ComplaintsBoard.com?

Do Your Research

The lesson is that you need to do your research when hiring a SEO company.

Ask how they do their work, especially linkbuilding. Then ask results and reviews from real customers. Once you know some of the clients they’ve worked with, reach out to those customers yourself.

We try and be as transparent as possible by listing our methods on our blog and by showing you our clients results.

Image courtesy Widjaya Ivan on Flickr.