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Why the UK SEO industry doesn't have an image problem

Lots of people think that the SEO industry has an image problem but here in the UK we don’t really see it that way. I meet with clients all the time who have had a bad experience with a particular SEO company in the past but they always blame the company, not the industry.

Nobody I’ve ever met in the UK has described what we do in a negative light while in the US everybody seems to paint SEO’s as scammers.

There are two types of people who make a lot of money in this industry, ones that are very good at SEO and work in a small team on their own projects and the others who have managed to take their SEO skills to the corporate level.

Just because you are great at SEO doesn’t mean you are great at the business side of things. Watching the “top 51 search marketers” insulting a potential client with a six figure monthly budget and then being celebrated on the worlds biggest SEO blog made every SEO in the UK cringe while most in the US thought it was very funny.

What does that tell you?

BY Patrick Altoft AT 10:21am ON Wednesday, 29 July 2009

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3 and has worked in the SEO industry for over 10 years. With experience across some of the worlds largest brands as well as startup businesses Patrick is well known in the industry and speaks regularly at the major SEO conferences and events. Follow Patrick on Twitter or Google+

Comments

  • http://www.gospelrhys.co.uk rhyswynne

    Could not agree more. I was shocked & appalled at the responses, and they made me cringe.

    From speaking to SEO’ers in the UK (and being one myself), I often find that they are a lot more honest with approaches, and aren’t afraid to say “Well, we can do this, but it will take some time”, rather than promising the earth and delivering little.

    The “Top 51 SEO’ers” didn’t seem approachable, rather than that, they seem that they’re backslapping their own successes. I honestly wonder whether these “Top 51 SEO’ers” are more concerned with “I’ve ranked #1 for effervescent tourniquet”, rather than having a decent ROI for the businesses that employ them.

    There does come a point where you can afford to cherry pick clients, heck we do ourselves, but those that we don’t pick we’re never rude or offensive to them, often we give them simple, honest advice on their business plan (for free), leaving the door open to them should they action our suggestions, to come to us when they actually need our services.

  • Robert Nicholson

    Hey Patrick -
    I guess because Industry as a whole is very concentrated in the UK, that professionalism and reputation matter a whole load. London & the UK are a little to small to piss off all the clients – and clients talk a lot about agencies (at events I attend like IBDG we do!) so any agency or consultant pissing everyone off wouldnt get too many more contracts!

  • David Lindop

    Very opportunistic post Patrick! :) I would have cashed in if I’d thought of it first though.

    My 2p/2c… I’m not sure this is a US-UK thing, and I’m reluctant to use such a generalisation. It might be because everyone was wrapped up in the moment when it was funny and that when the UK came online they had time to read through before commenting.

    I’ve worked with really professional SEOs in the US who would share our feelings on this issue.

  • http://www.blogstorm.co.uk Patrick Altoft

    Rhys all the people on the list are fantastic SEO’s without question but the whole thing would be better left alone rather than being touted as something to be proud of. I know I’m adding fuel to the fire here which probably isn’t the right thing to do either.

  • Paul Allen

    I’m sure a lot of those “elite” SEOs will offer a reputation management service for the search engines. A pity they couldn’t manage their own reputations better.

  • http://www.david-whitehouse.org/ David Whitehouse

    Here here Patrick – that post on SEOMoz disgusted me – I guess this is why we have so many big US clients looking for SEO’s in the UK…

  • http://www.vervesearch.com LisaMyers

    Hi Patrick,

    I totally agree, it was not a nice response, I must stress though that not all of the 51 on that list participated in the bullying, in fact the minority did. I was on that list and I can assure you I didn’t participate. In fact I regret not replying to the thread asking them to stop picking on the guy.

    I can tell you though that not all of the participants were from the US.

    Lisa

  • Jon Buchan

    I agree 100%

    The arrogance of some of those posts is incredible. I saw the phrase ‘us in the top tier’ used…. Oh my…

    They need to decide if they’re professionals or children masquerading as professionals.

    Jon

  • Matthew Oxley

    I agree,

    Don’t see this an entirely uk/us thing , more of a follow the crowd thing.

    Matthew

    ps – I keep looking for the thumb up/down buttton ;)

  • yoshimi

    I’ll own up to finding the whole thing very funny (and I’m in the UK) but it was funny because the responses were as ridiculous as the original email. It seemed to me to be two sides behaving badly. I have seen people say it reflects badly on the industry and I have to disagree, I don’t assume that all builders are sexist because some of them whistle at women walking down the street, and I wouldn’t assume that all SEO’s were this removed from business ettiquette just because a few chose to vent on a RFP email.

  • http://www.7banners.com mengliang

    I was cringing when I was reading that post. Guess I dun belong to that elite group.

  • MOGmartin

    I posted this across at SEOmoz, but thought it worth reposting here… :

    frankly if I were looking for custom I would ask the same thing. Irrespective of the BCC cock up, no potential customer deserves to be treated in this manner – it just smacks of total unprofessionalism.

    I have had problem customers in the past (Im now a “corporate” seo) and Im sure almost every agency/freelance SEO’er reading this will have done in the past,

    BUT…

    thats no reason whatsoever to respond the way that the guy did. How hard would it have been to ignore the email, or just send a polite, “thanks but no thanks” email..

    tut tut tut… its guys like that who dont do anything for us as an industry as a whole.

    MOGmartin

  • http://www.searchengineoptimisation.org.uk Phil Green

    Yeah I’m not too sure it was a USA/UK thing either. Whatever it was, it was pathetic from the people on the list. Cringeworthy reading.

  • Yura

    I don’t like generalizations, too, but when I saw Kim Krause Berg justify harassing, it nailed it to me. Also, I am Russian and I don’t approve bullying :) So it can be an US vs UK/Europe thing.

    That being said, I did give out a chuckle, while at the same time being disgusted by the response. You don’t normally reply to clients like that. I usually refer clients to other people, when I can’t take on the projects.

  • http://www.patrickmoogan.com/blog PaddyMoogan

    I’d agree too that I don’t think its neccessarily a UK/US thing. After all we do not know if some of the replies were from UK based SEO companies – Lisa has confirmed that UK companies were indeed on the list.

    I can understand the companies being annoyed that this guy has contacted them in the way he did and then shifted the blame for the mistake, but it was more the language and insults used in the replies that I didn’t find funny at all. There are more appropriate ways (and words) to use in order to get across the point that your angry without resorting to that.

  • http://www.gospelrhys.co.uk rhyswynne

    Patrick: Fair enough then. As I’m still (relatively) new in SEO, and more of a reader than a contributor, I didn’t recognise many of the names on that list. But even so, they may be great SEO’ers, but they offer rubbish customer service. Could you imagine, say, Microsoft ever respond to a sales enquiry with “You didn’t formulate the email right, *********.”? It wouldn’t happen.

    In retrospect to my earlier comment, I feel sorry for SEO’ers such as Lisa who may have been tarred with the same brush as some of these idiots.

  • http://www.consumerbase.com consumerbase

    Yeah, it might be time for us American SEOs to grow up and act a bit more professional, especially since our industry keeps growing and becoming more important every day.

  • US Seo

    “…made every SEO in the UK cringe while most in the US thought it was very funny.”

    What a ridiculous thing to say! And I thought that post over at SEOMoz was going to be the most obnoxious thing I would read today…

  • http://www.blogstorm.co.uk Patrick Altoft

    US SEO I got that impression from reading the comments on the SEOmoz post. Once a few more people chimed in it was clear that a lot of US people disagreed too but they hadn’t commented when I wrote this.

  • piereforcada

    As an ecommerce site and prospective client my interest having stumbled upon this thread and clicked through to the original post was that it was a ready made list of top SEO consultants. Doing my own research I clicked on Lisa Myers probably because her picture looked approachable. I then clicked on Sleepsure, listed as a client and tried buying a product and was unable to purchase as the buy now buttons take you to error pages. I use Firefox and asked a friend who uses IE to try the site and he had exactly the same experience.

  • http://www.vervesearch.com LisaMyers

    @Piereforcada Hi Piere, thanks for pointing out the shopping cart, we are aware that it’s down. It’s because we are doing a load of testing this week. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions http://www.vervesearch.com/contact-us/

  • Stagingworks

    Search Engine Optimization will be always on demand. Defining the brand image is really relative since there have been billion of online medias are having the same chance of saying different things on the similar issue. From Toronto Home Stager

  • Pingback: 10 Words/Phrases I Hate as an SEOer | The Gospel According To Rhys

  • piereforcada

    Payment buttons still clicking through to error pages on Sleepsure, for an ecommerce site why don’t you have a message to say testing on the site currently underway please call to place your order, is this a business at all?

  • http://www.tag44.com tag44

    Its good that UK seo industry has an good image.

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