There is not much doubt as to whether or not SEO is a legitimate industry.  It certainly is an area that requires expertise into a specific field and the results can have significant impact on an organization’s  revenue and visibility.  Considering the number of large and small business web sites online today, and more being added every second of the day, the competitive aspect of gaining visibility online is an extremely important area of focus that should be an area of prioritization for any business with a web site.

SEO is not rocket science.  Not at all.  It’s far more difficult.  Not only are the rules of the game changing all the time, but those very rules are also kept as exclusive secrets by the rulemakers themselves (the search engines).  At least in rocket science, you have laws of physics and constants that remain, allowing students to know exactly what needs to happen to ensure success.  There is no such constant in the SEO industry.

It is because of these unknown rules and the relative uncertainty behind the industry iteself that causes people to question the need for a profession SEO expert to be able to produce results.  There are enough novices out there that know enough to be dangerous, while claiming to be SEO experts, that the industry sometimes can get a bad name from people that do not produce expected results.  Also, there is an entire subdivision of the SEO world known as white hat and black hat, with a newer division sort of shading both of these, called grey hat.  White hat is basically following the recommendations that the search engines provide and going with ethical best practices, considered doing things the right way and not trying to game the system.  Black hat SEO uses strategies that have produced positive results in the past, but typically are done by gaming the system in a manner that also runs the risk of getting the site discredited or banned altogether from search engines.  Grey Hat is the strategy that maybe the search engines don’t necessarily want you to do or even agree with, but they aren’t gaming the system or doing things unethically.  An example of this would be paying for an inbound link to your site. Search engines do not want you to do this, because they don’t want people paying for links from sites that provide no value to your site. But paying for an inbound link from another site in your industry that  carries a lot of weight can be a very, very powerful asset for your site.  We never implement black hat practices at KaLor / SEO Columbus, but we will look at some of the grey options when it makes sense and is done the right way.

How can you tell if an SEO provider really knows what they are talking about?  Here are a few sure signs of someone trying to scam you, or at a minimum, take your money without providing you with the results you can be getting. 

1. Guaranteed #1 Rankings on Google  - I can guarantee you number 1 results on Google as well if that is what you are looking for, but the keyword phrase that you will rank #1 for will be a phrase that is never, ever searched by actual Google users.  The goal should be to get in the Top 3 on the first page (there is significant drop in click thru’s for sites ranking below #3) for a commonly searched phrase that will generate significant traffic for you.  For more competitive and general keywords, 1st page placement is generally good as well.  Nobody can guarantee #1 organic placement for a competitive keyword, period.  If they claim to do so, they are targeting those that do not know what they are talking about and are easy targets to take advantage of.
2. “We submit your site to 165 million search engines for free!”  This is another personal favorite of mine, people that claim they will submit your site to an insane amount of search engines on your behalf.  We won’t submit your site to any.  Not one.  And we’ll have better results for you.  Search engines index sites most quickly when it is linked to from other sites, as well as having a sitemap submitted via search tools like Webmaster Central.  And you don’t need to worry about 165 million search engines, since there are about 4 that really matter.  Rather, one that matters, and 3 others that should be considered.
3. They include Meta Keywords as part of their strategy and mention nothing about H1 or Title tags.  Meta Keywords are dead as dinosaurs.  Some respected SEO providers do still use them, but even they acknowledge they are for secondary search engines.  We don’t use them at all, and we do just fine.  They aren’t worth the time it takes to type them, in my opinion.  But having keyword driven and unique title tags, with valuable H1 and H2 tags on the page, will make a very dramatic difference on your site.

These are just three things to look out for.  I’ll try to keep this as a running list as I think of them or come across them.  It’s also editable with comments, so feel free to add your own below.  Maybe I’ll incorporate them into the main list if they are good, and once again… thanks for reading.