Suddenly Everyone’s an SEO Pilot with a Team of Experts at their Arms

There are always going to be those who are real experts offering real products or services with proven strategies and the ability to make changes to their techniques as the market and industries change. There are also always going to be those who put on the uniform, slide on the aviator sunglasses, and pretend like they know how to pilot a passenger jet. Sadly, the latter is starting to outnumber the former, particularly in the world of search marketing.

It happens in many industries, particularly ones where things get easier. For example, owning a custom computer shop was a nice, tight niche just a few years ago. Now, you can drop a paper airplane off a building and have a 50/50 chance of hitting someone who can build a custom computer. It isn’t that they are faking. It’s that the modular design and cross-compatibility of computer hardware components has made building custom computers as easy as building a LEGO house.

The arena of search marketing is different. In both PPC management as well as search engine optimization, there has been a tremendous influx of experts and services filling the ears and inboxes of prospective clients. It’s not that it is easier than it was in the past. In fact, it’s harder today than it has ever been in the past, particularly with the complexities, risks, and quality needs of SEO. The reason that it’s growing is because the pitch is easy. Search is obscure. It’s super easy to fall for the wrong pitch because they’re all starting to sound the same.

In Catch Me if You Can, Leonardo DiCaprio‘s portrayal of the infamous Frank Abagnale Jr. was an example of what I’m seeing more and more of today in the search marketing world. It’s a matter of being able to talk the talk and winging it when it comes to walking the walk. Everyone says the buzzwords. Unique content. Targeting competitors’ cities. Market coverage. Link building. Social signals. I’ve heard pitches from people who can barely spell “SEO” that made them sound like their services were rock solid until you asked them detailed questions or demanded more than one or two example of successes.

Therein lies the two biggest problems. Those who are buying SEO don’t know the right questions to ask or what the correct answers should be. More importantly, every vendor in the industry has at least a couple of examples of where their clients are ranking well even if they had no hand in making it happen. This happened to me first hand this week when a site that I had optimized to rank well two years ago was used as an example of search dominance by their website provider. Their rankings had fallen in the two years since we had optimized them but they were still good enough to be an example of this web provider’s excellence.

There’s really no way to fight this, unfortunately. For my own company, I’ll be collecting dozens of examples of SEO domination to give to the sales team, but what about the smaller companies that are doing it right? If they have a dozen clients and they’re all doing very well, they still look bad compared to the giant company with 2000 clients that has 8 examples of good performance. Is there a solution? Is there a way to wake up the industry and show them how to tell the difference between aggressive, solid search marketing and the type that isn’t worth a buck, let along hundreds or thousands a month?

I will be taking the comments from this post and applying them to the Automotive SEO Study.

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Comment by JD Rucker on June 10, 2013 at 12:31pm: That's awesome, James.

Comment by James Bunting on June 10, 2013 at 11:29am: I just signed up for the SEO study. Very much looking forward to the education - thanks for providing the opportunity.

Comment by JD Rucker on June 9, 2013 at 2:30am: Ken, that's one of the keys. Keyword quality is something to focus upon. It's much easier to get ranked at the top for "2013 Toyota Camry for sale in Burnsville MN" than it is to get to the top for "Minneapolis Toyota".

Mr Natural, it's definitely a great point. Process before bulk. Thankfully, the industry is much better at lead follow-up today than it was 7 years ago when I first got started on the vendor side.

Doug, it can apply to all of them. SEO was fresh on my mind, but PPC and social are both loaded with the same, even worse. I had someone who has been out of the automotive PPC business for a while come back and tell me Friday that current PPC models in the automotive industry compared to other industries was like comparing a Kodak camera to today's modern digital cameras.

David, now I'm definitely interested. You have to repost it. Best practice - I always [select all] and then [copy] prior to posting any blog or comment. I've been burned way too many times. It's now habitual.

Comment by David Sharp on June 9, 2013 at 1:37am: Sorry about that "Experts" comment, not exactly certain how it happened and it won't let me delete it. I had just posted a comment that I spent about twenty minutes typing and it is gone now. I guess that makes me look like something much less than an "expert".

Comment by David Sharp on June 9, 2013 at 1:31am: Experts

Comment by Doug Davis on June 8, 2013 at 7:49pm: There have always been plenty of snake oil salesmen looking for quick money from car dealerships. I was surprised you chose SEO. I see far more idiots pitching SEM/PPC and Social media. SEO is time consuming and labor intensive.

Comment by Mr. Natural on June 8, 2013 at 4:38pm: O.K. J.D. Apply this...SEO marketers have a very skewed view of the need for SEO at the dealership level. Some Dealerships don't even have a CRM. Many that do, don't have anyone who know how to use it. I know how to use any CRM, and I'm so far from needing SEO it's crazy. Worse, the SEO marketers try to contact me through my web pages by generating leads, which starts the clock, which pisses me off.

Any store who buys SEO services better be dam sure they have a working system for following leads that come in. If they don't have an airtight follow-up system that is working, the last thing in the world they need is SEO. Let's not put the cart before the horse. If your staff can't utilize the CRM and adhere to a follow-up system, the last thing in the world they need is SEO. Much the same can be said for many of the products being offered by the elite vendors. 95% of all dealerships need help at so much more of a basic level. The last thing they need is fancy SEO, Social Marketing, and the like.

To anyone who sells SEO: Please quit soliciting business by submitting leads through our web pages. Dealerships hate it.

Respectfully,

Mr. Natural

Comment by Ken Dugas on June 8, 2013 at 4:34pm: Great Article as usual JD, you gotta love it when these so-called experts boast about getting a phrase on page one when they are the only one in the world searching for that exact phrase match.