SEO for Dummies author Peter Kent has been making some pretty scathing comments about the SEO industry in a new interview:
“Over the last few years as I speak to more clients and hear their stories, it has led me to believe that 80% of the business is scam.” Kent qualifies this remarkable statement by adding: “By that I mean that 80% of people in the business doing SEO consultancy are either running an outright scam, or they thought it was good to get into SEO because it’s a hot area – but they don’t really know what they’re doing.”
Web designers also get it in the neck:
“I have never met a web design company or web design consultant who understands SEO,” he says bluntly. “Don’t trust web designers as far as search engine optimization goes – even if they tell you they understand it, they don’t. I used to say that a few understand it but I’m still waiting for them.”
I suspect he may be exaggerating for effect but you can tell that a number of UK PR consultancies have been seduced into building entirely Flash based sites – which effectively renders most of the content invisible to Google (I know that Google is supposed to be able to index Flash now, but I’ve yet to see the evidence).
However, Just to ensure the article isn’t 100pc tirade, Kent ends with a few tips:
1. Understand your keywords. Do keyword analysis, don’t assume. I always tell people to spend a few bucks and get Wordtracker, spend a few hours, dig around, and do it properly.
2. It’s interesting to hear that people are obsessed with abbreviations. They think it’s important but when they do proper keyword research they often find that the same abbreviation means something different to a different group of people.
Certainly agree on point 1 – never make assumptions about keywords (or anything for that matter. Point 2 has particular relevance to the tech sector which has always been riddled with acronyms and abbreviations.
Filed under: General PR, Technology PR, tech pr , peter kent, seo
There are many so called SEO specialists/companies that claim to be experts in the filed. I’ve come across tons of ads that promise permanent first page appearance…
[...] of mine pointed a blog post to me written by Peter Kent, author, SEO for Dummies. The post claims that 80% of search engine marketing consultants are scammers and I must say that I [...]
Actually the # is closer to 90%, scammers will use any uneducated person and this is why i think the first job of an seo consultant is to educate his clients.
Sorry I would say 99.9%