Preying On Your Inexperience

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Preying On Your Inexperience

By Sage Lewis
http://www.sagerock.com/website-promotion-articles/unethical-seo....

A new client of ours just suffered the most classic mistreatment from his newly replaced SEO firm -- all the previously done, paid-for work has magically disappeared from the site. Can this happen to you?

Sadly, unethical SEO companies are still out there selling contracts. There are two big areas of SEO that can inspire fraud -- undefined work ownership and undefined services. Don't let vague contracts and simple marketing packages lure you into an SEO relationship that's ripe for abuse.


<b>Undefined Work Ownership</b>

This is a classic gray area of SEO that doesn't often get discussed during the sales process. Ownership is mostly dependent on how an SEO firm operates. If clients pay a monthly sum for a number of vaguely defined services, or if they pay per click without knowing where traffic specifically comes from, there may be some work-ownership troubles if the relationship is terminated. And keep in mind that a relationship can end for many reasons - client dissatisfaction, an SEO firm closing shop or being sold, your or their company contact vanishing, etc.

<i>Code and Content:</i>
You should always own the work if a firm works within your website (in our opinion the best way to work), making your existing site pages optimized and/or adding new, optimized content that is part of the existing, uploaded site. Firms that operate this way usually always give the client ownership of the finished work. If you hire a firm to do this type of work, make sure you have ownership rights when you sign the contract. That way, if you end the relationship and the work changes or disappears, you can call a lawyer.

<i>Portals and Mirror Sites:</i>
In a different type of pricing model, an SEO firm creates a new, optimized site that they promote (sometimes legit, sometimes not), which generates new traffic to your main site. Businesses using this model tend to charge per click and a lot of companies like this shared-risk, low-up-front-investment model. The catch, however, is ownership. Read the contract carefully and find out what happens if you want to stop paying per click. Can you buy out the marketing site? Can you own the promo site after a 1,2,or3-year relationship? Also, how much is a click and for how long? If you can't negotiate eventual ownership of the work, beware. Unfortunately, a common unethical practice is the reselling of these created portals/sites to your competition if/once you change SEO firms.

<i>Pay-Per-Click Engine Accounts:</i>
Ownership in this arena basically comes down to whose credit card is used for bidding charges. If you cut an SEO firm a set check amount for bidding in and managing PPC engines, you probably can never have ownership over the account. If you want to keep getting that PPC traffic after leaving a firm, the charges need to come from your credit card. This may be a problem for a firm that has all clients under one big account, so don't expect them to be overjoyed with that idea. But it shouldn't be impossible for them to create a separate account for your firm. It just depends on the firm's level of flexibility. If you go the route of having them use your card, be sure to request the username and password for all accounts for your records. Then, before or after you break off a relationship, be sure and visit the account and change the contact email/information so that you can get notices about account balances and charges, etc.

<i>Directory Registration:</i>
Yahoo! and some other directories are shifting to annual fees, and if a firm has billed you for this without using your card for the recurring fee, you may not be notified about the directory listing coming to an end. This is typically not a big deal since resubmission is not usually more expensive than renewal. But you don't want to pay a new SEO firm to re-submit you to a directory you used to be in. Once again, the easiest solution to this problem is having the recurring fees charged to your credit card.


<b>Undefined Services</b>

Search Engine Marketing is a confusing industry and unfortunately some firms use this confusion to their unethical advantage. The easiest way to avoid being taken advantage of in any circumstance is to understand what services you are buying and pay per service. Paying per click or position can work out as long as the SEO firm keeps you in the loop about the services used to generate these results. Not knowing can lead to poor lead quality, overcharging, questionable tactics, and short-term results.

<i>Paying For Clicks:</i>

A lot of times, with this type of contract, a client is paying an SEO firm per click that firm generates, and the SEO firm is simply turning around and enrolling the site in pay-per-click search engine programs. With this model, an SEO firm will charge a set amount per click and this charge covers the maintenance and setup costs for bidding in per-click engines. There's nothing wrong with this system, unless you don't know what phrases are being bid on, don't have a cap on monthly cost, or don't have a sense of what the phrases normally cost in different PPC engines. Some industries have clicks as low as .10 cents in Overture. Some industries don't want to bid on general, expensive terms because traffic is unqualified. So, if you pay $1.00/click, but all the phrases being bid on are under .25 cents, you're paying .75 cents/click for maintenance. On the flip side, if you're paying $1.00/click and your SEO firm is bidding on potentially popular but untargeted phrases, you could be paying for a lot of non-buying traffic.

There are two ways to guard against this: either understand the tactics/services being rendered to deliver results in this kind of campaign, or track your conversion rates to be sure your per-click ROI can be justified. But remember, if you use site stats as a check for this type of campaign, you may still run into ownership problems if the ROI is bad and you feel the firm is under performing and fire them.

<i>Paying For Positions:</i>

Another payment model ripe for abuse is the pay for position contract. This, once again, is a pay-per-click search engine service contract. We've run into companies paying exorbitant amounts of money to be #1 in Yahoo, MSN, and Google (and they are usually thrilled by this promise). The only way to be #1 in these engines is to pay the engines, either through a pay-per-click program or a premium sponsorship program. So before hiring someone to magically make you #1 everywhere, understand what it would cost to pursue those efforts in-house. It may be much cheaper. Depending on the phrase, you can be #1 in Yahoo and MSN for .10 cents/click. This is also true with Google's Ad boxes (down the right hand side).

<b>Conclusion</b>
Even if this industry confuses you, don't fall prey to vague and simple search-engine-marketing solutions. You don't need to become an expert, but if an SEO firm is not willing to educate you about what they are doing; it's a red flag. Another danger sign: no contract, or a contract that is about 3 paragraphs long. Get a thorough contract from an SEO firm, one that outlines services, specifies work ownership, provides termination provisions, non-compete clauses, non-disclosures, etc.

If you're unsure of your firm's (or a potential firm's) tactics, email or call SageRock or another reputable SEO firm. Most firms will be happy to help you make an informed decision. Cleaning up fraud in this industry and educating consumers is in every legitimate SEO firms' best interest.

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