5 reasons to be frustrated with SEO and SEO firms.

Alright.   I’ve been holding back on this post for a long, long time.  But I just can’t hold my breath any longer.
SEO is ticking me off!  Not because it’s tedious and a lot of work.  That I can deal with.  But it’s ticking me off because:

1. Everyone- including my best friend’s grandpa- seems to be “selling” SEO like snake-oil salesmen in the old west.
2. Clients don’t understand SEO and fall prey to the snake oil salesmen- who all seem to say that they… and only they… are “the best!”  And guess what?  They are pretending that they know how to “game the system”.  And that’s just wrong.  Plus it can’t actually be done.  Not for very long at least.  Trust me…. Google is like Santa.  They know who’s been naughty and nice.
3. No one is really talking about the return on investment SEO should deliver.  And they certainly aren’t measuring it.
4. Most people seem to “want” SEO but they don’t even take the time to create a serious strategy so the traffic they drive to their website (if any) actually converts into leads, sales and profits.  So the monthly check they send to the SEO firm is wasted on both ends because the SEO firm isn’t really doing anything and neither is their client.  Thus, everyone feels good but nothing is actually happening.
5. And finally, if most firms could get their sales teams to properly address the leads the are already getting AND make sure they hit their quota for cold-calls, they wouldn’t even need the all-too-tempting crutch of SEO.  Sorry but I think writing a check each month for SEO makes some people feel they figured out how to properly manage the mysterious forces of the internet.  They hope one day, in the near future, their SEO pal will finally actually come through and drive tons of people to their website and money to their bank account.

There!  I said it!  My therapist will be so proud of me.
Ok.  So what do we do about this?
Well first, let’s remember what SEO is and why we (at MarketSmart) recommend it.  That will be in my next post.  So stay tuned!