I am an Aaron Wall groupie. I use his tools, and often I go up to him and say thank you (and walk away) at every conference because of how much info he graciously gives out…but this time I think he is SO WRONG on his most recent blog post, titled Why Traditional SEO Consulting usually sucks.
My old boss sent me the post and it just sparked me to write why I think Aaron is wrong on this. I just got thinking, “My GOD, when will the crap end?”
If Aaron believes this and isn’t pulling a Calacanis (i.e., say something controversial to an audience and get them to link to you) and is sincere, let me break down why he is totally wrong, line by line.
Aaron’s Point #1 – I do not like doing much traditional SEO client work, and see the business model as having limited longterm value for most SEO consultants.
This has been talked about forever. What is to be said to the people who said the same thing 3 years ago? For a dying industry, it sure is growing.
Aaron’s Point #2 – Most prospective SEO customers are not ranked well because their businesses are unremarkable and have little to no competitive advantage.
True, but what happens where there are 10 remarkable businesses who gets #1, #5, #10? How does the top 10 get sorted out? ‘Remarkable’ is a loaded term — what may be remarkable to me may be unremarkable to you. Remarkability is in the eye of the beholder. Is Twitter more remarkable than Plurk? Is a BMW more remarkable than a Lexus? Than Audi, than Tesla? Is Philadelphia more remarkable than Colorado? You get the point.
Aaron’s Point #3 – Those who have not fully bought off on the power of SEO often end up underpaying the first time they buy services, which precludes honest consultants from working with them. After they got burned once, they want to minimize future risks, which sets off a market for lemons effect.
This is totally true. The idea of bringing the service in-house still has risks. Most people interviewing SEO candidates don’t know enough to pick the right firm. They aren’t going to know enough to pick the right employee, but here a consultant could help. Every one of us has bought a lemon at some point, but we didn’t decide to go build our own cars, did we?
Aaron’s Point #4 – As the web gets more competitive, many of the best SEO techniques are going to relate to content strategies and how a client interacts with the media and people in their marketplace…something that is a bit hard to control as an external consultant unless there is an internal team that also pushes to get it done.
Yes, I would agree with this as well. This affects the “traditional” SEO who, until now, has focused on programming tricks to get rankings. But most SEO’s saw this trend coming years ago and have stepped up their marketing savvy by learning or hiring (that is why I posted the 10 books every SEO should read to keep their jobs a few months ago). None are SEO or development books!
In the same way that a marketing agency (N. W. Ayer & Son was the first full-service agency to assume responsibility for advertising content. N.W. Ayer opened in 1869, according to Wikipedia) must interview the client, sit on the phone with the sales team, and talk to the product teams and executives to be able to market their product, an SEO team should do the same. I know we have about 75 different interview questions for each client – agencies have been around for over 100 years creating copy, designs, and ads, all things that people could do themselves or in-house, yet they are still striving!
Aaron’s Point #5 – Businesses that *really* get SEO and value SEO bring it in-house.
Why? Businesses that really get profitability will look at all options and make a decision. This is like saying do I do SEO OR PPC — you look at the landscape and maybe do both, one, or none. I have B2B clients who are leaders in their space, the cost of hiring an in-house person would dwarf the costs of our campaign. Why would they do that, especially given the fact that their ROI is amazing?
Aaron also acts as if there is an unlimited number of QUALITY SEO practitioners out there. I know of a local business who is looking to hire an SEO. They hired one who quit after 4 months, and now they have had a job posting out there for 3 months.
People didn’t stop searching, so now there is an opportunity cost. They are LOSING business because they MUST have it in-house and are waiting for the right match. Do they hurry and get someone again, or wait? Either way they are missing opportunities.
If you can’t find or RETAIN a great SEO, what do you do?
Aaron’s point #6 – Most the time clients do not want you to mention them, and if you do there is a risk that Google will edit the ROI right out of your service.
Why would Google edit the ROI of a relevant site that is ranking well for terms it should be? I think this line item makes a BIG presumption — it presumes that you are cheating. If you are deploying mostly legitimate tactics and a few aggressive ones to get your rankings for terms you are relevant for, then you should be fine. If you are doing something like this, you should be worried!
I actually had a hard time writing this because of how much I respect Aaron, but I think this needed to be said.
