The Snake Oil SEO Salesman

SEO is simply ranking high for keywords on Google’s search results pages organically, without the need for paid ads. This is extremely valuable for most companies, however, it is also not such a simple task and can take a very large investment to provide true ROI.
Not to toot my own horn, but I am extremely good at SEO, probably far better than most people that work at “SEO” agencies or provide similar type services. So with such a strong skill set in my arsenal, why did I get out of SEO and selling SEO to our customers for the most part?
Well, the problem with selling SEO as a service is that SEO and overall search engine optimization requires an incredibly large and long roadmap of tasks, strategies, and a massive range of skill sets to accomplish such tasks. I got out of selling straight SEO services because to accomplish SEO best, may actually require software development, or web design, or industry specific copywriting, or video creation, or PR, or many other specific skill sets depending on what a client’s needs are, their budget, and their specific digital situation. The list of skill sets is massive, and it is unlikely anyone person or agency can do all these things in a high-quality manner at a fair price:

• PR / Outreach
• Content creation
• Graphic Design, infographics etc
• Video Production
• Web Development
• Web Design
• On Page SEO
• Keyword Research
• Off Page SEO
• Citations
• Social Media

We do of course provide specific tasks like keyword research, technical SEO work, etc, but we don’t really aggressively sell SEO as a monthly service because it is honestly a misleading service to provide as one blanket service. Often times the best SEO comes from the company itself creating high-quality expert level content that only they can create, not some third party who is not an expert in their industry.
Google is looking at a massive array of data to rank search results, and simply having a one size fits all SEO approach doesn’t work. SEO requires big picture thinking and a long-term strategy that is consistently executed on a weekly or even daily basis.
I think businesses of all sizes need to get much smarter when it comes to how they approach SEO and focus on doing quality marketing through investing in a quality website infrastructure, quality content, content promotion, and other types of online or offline advertising. Partnerships are also a great way to build up SEO through high-quality backlinks. I think the days of leveraging an “SEO” agency don’t make sense and everyone should be skeptical of the SEO agencies trying to sell them.
At the end of the day, you need high-quality marketing and web development services to grow your web presence, not snake oil SEO salesmen over promising and under delivering. Next time someone tries to sell you on “SEO” find out exactly what it is they are doing and how they are going about doing it for you. Chances are the things you need are all different skill sets and tasks you can either do internally, with a web development agency like Trellis, or with contractors and various specialists at a lower overall cost and higher quality.